


i try to picture me without you (but i can’t)

by shuofthewind



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Blindness, Darcy Feels, Discussion of Ableism Culture, Discussion of Rape Culture, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gratuitous Cat Metaphors, Headcanons Everywhere, Law School, Law School Prof Jen Walters, Matt Murdock Is Very Good At Lying To Himself, Mutual Pining, POV Blind Person, Past Rape/Non-con, Social Justice Warrior Darcy Lewis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 14:14:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4838249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regardless of his plans, life keeps throwing him curveballs. He shouldn't be blind; it feels too much like a punishment from God, considering what he did. His father should still be alive. He should be studying for the bar, not pining after the 1L student that the other TAs keep calling <em>Luna Lovegood on steroids</em>. But here he is.</p><p>Maybe instead of avoiding them, it's better to start leaning into the curveballs, instead. </p><p>[No superpowers AU. Law school fic. Matt's a dork. NOT <em>TPoW</em> or <em>i pray every single day</em>, though arguably some scenes could cross into that.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	i try to picture me without you (but i can’t)

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR: Discussion of rape culture, discussion of rape (past, not of speaker), discussion of major depressive disorder, discussion of suicide/suicidal thoughts (not of speaker), discussion of ableism (especially in regards to mental illness, but also in terms of blindness/hard of sight people), low feelings of self-worth (thanks, Matt), discussion of poverty, discussion of misogyny, the patriarchy, and victim shaming, discussion of alcoholism, discussion of death, murder, etc (Jack Murdock, most of it's canon), and Major Feels, which, for these two, is...always what happens.
> 
> (I think that's everything but it's 3am so I'll check again tomorrow) 
> 
> I swear to god this started out fluffy and wound up SO FAR FROM IT in some ways that it's stupid.
> 
> This is a no-powers 'verse, so Steve, here, is actually a man in his nineties who is still kicking. I have a lot of headcanons about badass lawyer Steve. He marched during the Civil Rights movement and has been up in front of the Supreme Court a few times. Go, skinny!Steve, go.
> 
> Thanks to extasiswings for both encouraging me and providing law school data. But mostly for the enabling. 
> 
> Unbeta'ed. Title from "Immortals" by Fall Out Boy. (No, I don't know either.)

Foggy was the one to uncover Josie’s. Matt’s still not entirely sure how they actually ever started using this place as a watering hole—he’s blind, sure, but he can tell a dive bar by sound better than any seeing person alive, even if that thing about blind people having heightened senses to make up for what they lack is total bullshit. The counter is always far beyond the disgusting side of sticky, most of the drinks taste like they’re lovingly mixed with battery acid, and the TV craps out half the time, so there’s nothing to do except get wasted to forget that you’re trapped in this more-than-slightly horrible sketchfest in a more-than-slightly horrible neighborhood.

Foggy loves it, though. He’s known Josie since he was six, or so he claims (Matt doubts that Josie really remembers the six-year-old Foggy, aside from possibly as the round-cheeked gremlin who dug up her flower pots—“I was a mischievous child, Matt. Like, I was basically Peter Pan, but I couldn’t fly. Which was upsetting. But I made it work!”—but she seems to accept this as truth, too), and so there’s a certain amount of loyalty involved. (“House pride,” Foggy says, nudging him. “C’mon. Hell’s Kitchen Pride. C’mon, Matt, _c’mon_. Patronize local establishments!”) Besides, it’s not as if they have the money to afford anyplace better. And there is a certain amount of charm to Josie’s, the way a penny left in Coca-Cola is charming. Amusing, until your teeth fall out.

So when Foggy calls him halfway through his office hours (there are three 1Ls in his closet-sized office right now, and it’s cramped even when it’s just him, so it’s a struggle to grab his phone before someone knocks over either a coffee cup, a textbook, or both) to let him know that they’re going to Josie’s after, no arguments, “you cannot possibly have topped my day, Murdock,” it’s not a surprise. Or even much of a push. And since it’s Friday, he settles himself in for the extremely high possibility of Foggy getting absolutely blasted.

It takes a good hour longer than he planned for to get to Josie’s, mostly because a trio of girls from Walters’ Crim class ambush him on his way out the door to ask him simple questions they probably already know the answers to. (He’s not stupid. He knows half the people who come to his office hours are only there because they’re interested in him, not because of the course material. He’s not happy about it, particularly—he can appreciate attention as much as the next guy, but having it _constantly_ during his work hours is frustrating—but he knows it’s true. So he deals with it.) So, when he finally skips the broken step down into the bar, Foggy’s not alone. In fact, Foggy is talking to someone. Which is also not uncommon, because Foggy talks to everyone. What _is_ a surprise—he knows the voice.

“—don’t really know what to do other than punch him, but, you know, I’d get expelled if I do that, and I’d kind of like to keep going to class even if this bastard keeps trying to look down my shirt—”

“—just let the guy have it, I swear, you have to teach them early or they mess with you all the way through to your 3L, there’s no stopping them when they—oh, hey, Matt.”

“Hey,” Matt says, slowly, because when he sets a hand to the back of the nearest chair, he’s touching someone, and they’re definitely not Josie’s usual mistakes in human bodies. The clothing’s softer, first of all. Also cleaner. If he stands still, he can catch a hint of what smells like honey shampoo. “I didn’t know this was a thing.”

“Ah, I ran into Lewis on my way off-campus and dragged her along. She looks like someone just ran over her dog or something. But considerably more murderous.”

“I’m told that I have a very good resting bitchface,” Lewis says. She’s in the Crim class Matt TA’s for, with Professor Walters. (He knows this not because she’s pretty—which, according to the other 1Ls, she is, in a forties’ pin-up way—but because she sits right behind him and mutters profanities under her breath when they go over particularly gruesome case studies. It’s not because she doesn’t want to be there, he doesn’t think. More like she _really_ doesn’t like it when people get away with shit.) “Hey.”

(And he won’t lie, sometimes it’s really, really hard not to burst out laughing at some of the things she says, because considering she’s what the other TAs call “Luna Lovegood on steroids” she’s also really, bitingly funny, and Professor Walters would probably cut his head off if he started snickering because of what Lewis is grumbling about the intricacies and inanities of the New York State CPL.)

“I didn’t know you two had met,” Matt says, and this is one of those times when he really wishes he could glare at people. Because _what the hell_ is Foggy doing dragging a 1L (not even a 1L, but a 1L from a class _Matt is a TA for_ ) into Josie’s?

“It was ordained by the fates,” Lewis says, in a very dry voice.

At the same time, Foggy says, “I stole her coffee by accident last week and she nearly cold-clocked me, it was very intimidating. Especially considering she’s about the size of a pixie.”

“In what universe did the name on that cup look like _Foggy_ instead of _Darcy_?”

“In my defense, our names both end in Y, and Teresa’s handwriting is shit.” Foggy plucks at Matt’s sleeve. “Sit. Imbibe. Today is a day for imbibing. I may or may not have had a break-up right before my last class, and Lewis has some asshole constantly trying to stick his hands up her shirt when she goes for handouts in Crim.”

Matt settles in a free chair. “You and Marci broke up?”

“See, the thing is, I don’t know if we broke up, or if we _broke up_ , because this happens a lot.” Foggy’s not slurring, not yet, but there’s a mellow sadness under his words that Matt usually only hears when Foggy’s just on the edge. “I was going to ask Lewis to explain female brains to me, but sadly, they are just the same as male. Just in boob-bearing meatsacks.”

“If we’re talking cispeople, then yeah, boob-bearers have the same kind of brain as dick-bearers,” Lewis says, and knocks her shoulder into Matt’s as she leans around to pat Foggy’s hand. “Brains don’t change from sex to gender or whatever. Social conditioning is your problem. The social code that tells women we should lie and play hard-to-get and let people _chase_ us—which, by the way, gross, every time I hear that I feel like I should go put on one of those red foxhunt jackets from England and ride around on a giant-ass horse—is the same social code that tells men that women are pretty pictures to be fondled, and that our brains don’t actually work like normal human brains, so there’s _no way_ we can ever understand each other. Which is just another way of saying _oh, women aren’t smart enough for this, better pretend they can’t understand anything at all._ ”

“Goddamn social conditioning,” Foggy says, and smacks his glass against the counter. “Josie, save me, I’m empty.”

Josie grunts from the other end of the bar.

“Who the hell is trying to fondle you in class?” Matt says without thinking, and then hates himself a little, because what the fuck kind of sentence is that. Lewis heaves a breath that people can probably hear in Jersey. Or Boston. Or possibly Florida.

“You know that guy who sits like—two down from me? Towards the door. His name’s Tucker. Grossest asshole ever. Like, I’m pretty sure his teeth are rotten in the back, there’s no way his breath could be that damn nasty otherwise.”

Matt knows who she’s talking about. Only from attendance, really—Tucker never shows up to his office hours—but also through his grades, which aren’t the best. Walters has dropped files on his desk once or twice to wake him up in the middle of class. “What’s he doing?”

She blows air out her nose. At the same moment, someone in the back of the bar starts bellowing in Czech, and so Matt has to tip his head and lean towards her chair to hear her better. Josie settles a beer in front of him, and stalks off.  “I usually wear hoodies and stuff because my boobs are fucking huge and I learned at the age of twelve that people like to comment on them, but it was really hot—two weeks ago, I think? So I wore a T-shirt. And ever since then he’s been trying to like—he’s doing that slinky thing that guys who think they’re slick are _so sure_ they can get away with, where they keep reaching past you and their arms brush your boobs or whatever? Well, not you,” she adds, belatedly, “you don’t have boobs so you wouldn’t know this, you get people just outright touching you instead, but like—that’s a thing that people do. And he’s always staring at my chest and—and making cow noises and shit when he knows I’m paying attention, and a few days ago I was at this bar and he showed up randomly and started hitting on me, and I told him to fuck off, but it was—weird. Like, the sort of weird that makes you really uncomfortable, not just confused. And I _really_ want to punch him in the face _._ ”

Matt chokes on his beer.

“Seriously,” says Foggy, sagely. “Just like—just haul off and hit him. You’re tiny but powerful. It’d work.”

“Yeah, and with my luck he’d snitch, and then I get suspended or get a citation or whatever, and _he_ gets to walk away like he didn’t do a fucking thing.” She smacks her hands against the counter, and then makes a disgusted noise. Because of the counter, he thinks. Not because of Tucker. “Like—people keep telling me to report him, but that basically never works—I have tried, believe me, this happened to me _so often_ in high school and undergrad and the administration never wants to listen—so I thought I’d just, you know, ignore it. Which I get isn’t positive and not very feminist of me or whatever, but you have to pick your battles. And I’m so tired all the time lately that even _thinking_ about fighting the administration again is too much. So I thought I’d just hold off, but then he started getting worse, and I considered telling Walters but that’s an embarrassing to have to tell your professor, you know, even if she has equivalent boobage and probably knows this problem inside and out, and I just—I’m really sick and tired of having to think about problems like this. Like, why is it _my fault_ that some asshole decides he really wants to grab my boobs? Answer: it’s not. It’s _not_ my fault, I _don’t_ want to get over it, it _isn’t fair_ that I have to be the one agonizing over reporting it when _he’s_ being the asshole, and I’m just—really loud,” she says, belatedly. Half the bar has gone silent. “Sorry.”

Foggy taps his fingernails against the counter in a three-four-three beat—first-middle-ring, then first-middle-ring-pinky, then first-middle-ring. “I kinda want to say that we can help if you want, but like—I’m afraid you’ll bite me.”

“I only bite on request,” Lewis replies, and leans around Matt to pat at Foggy again. “And I appreciate the thought, but no. I’ll deal with it, somehow. Anyway, your day was worse than mine, so I’ll—I do this thing where I tell everyone everything and it’s probably not very comfortable for anyone but I just don’t have a filter, so like…sorry for the rampage. I guess. Though I _shouldn’t_ have to be sorry,” she adds. “I shouldn’t have to be sorry for being angry that someone’s harassing me. But I’m sorry for the rampage.”

The inside of his mouth feels kind of tacky when he says, “Don’t be.” Still, he hears her shift around to look at him, so he must have said something close to right. “You don’t have to apologize for something like that. And—” he stops, considers it. Starts again. “If you do want to tell Walters, I can back you up. If you want.”

He can’t tell if she’s smiling or not, but she squeezes his hand without an ounce of hesitation. Her nails are cut short, and a cacophony of wristbands press into his skin. “Thanks. I’ll—I’ll let you know, okay? But thanks.”

She lets go with about as much ceremony as grabbing on, but she pinches his thumb as she goes like a little goodbye.

The next Crim class isn’t until Tuesday, but the following Monday when Matt stops by his office to collect homework he’d left behind, he hears someone clear their throat. “Hey.”

“Lewis.” He can’t remember if she’s ever been to office hours before. “Sorry, I’m just—I don’t have time right now, I just stopped to grab something—”

“No, I know. I mean, your office hours are printed on the syllabus.” She sounds like she’s fidgeting, which is not something he’d associate with the girl who picks fights in Crim about motive and consequence. “God, I sound weird. Anyway, like—I was on my way to see Tammany about something and I saw you and I thought I’d say, you know, sorry. For crashing yesterday. Though in my defense, Foggy gets surprisingly pushy when he wants something.”

Matt considers that. Then he unlocks his office door. “It’s probably good that you came, honestly. I don’t think I could have bundled Foggy into the taxi if you hadn’t helped.” He leans his cane against the wall. “Probably would have given him a concussion.”

“Slammed him through a window,” she says, cheerfully, as he starts going through his desk. “Shut his foot in the door. But yeah, I mean—I know Foggy said that Josie’s was a thing that you guys, you know, do on the regular, and that I should come because quote, _you are a manic and terrible pixie and you complete our unholy, unseelie trinity_ , unquote—”

“Unseelie?”

“—but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable or anything? Especially because you’re, you know, my TA.” She clears her throat. Her shoes scuff against the floor. “So I won’t be offended if you’re like, _god, Darcy, GTFO of my sketchy bar_ —because that bar is _very sketchy_ , Jesus Christ, you guys, I thought the hobo in the corner was going to like…kill us.”

He’s very glad that he’s bent down behind his desk right now, because it’s hiding how his mouth is twitching. “Crazy Tom’s harmless for the most part.”

“I feel like the fact that you call him _Crazy Tom_ should be a tipoff that he’s probably not harmless.”

Matt chokes on a laugh. “Probably.” There’s the folded corners of his essay. He tugs it out. “And—I mean, it surprised me. But it wasn’t uncomfortable or anything.”

“Oh, thank god.” She lets out a sigh. “I just—you seem super chill, which, cool, but like—whenever people storm you after class with the fake questions and the not-so-subtle arm-touching you always look like you want to knock them over like bowling pins—”

“I do?”

“Dude, you so do. So I wasn’t sure if I like, induced some kind of private ragemonster by tagging along. Especially since Foggy didn’t tell me you’d be there until we were sitting down and he was like _no, that’s Matt’s chair, don’t use that chair_. So I swear to god I’m not stalking you or anything, it just—” She stops. “I promise I don’t usually babble this much. I am calm and collected and an actual person when I get more than two hours of sleep and haven’t spent the past forty minutes arguing about Planned Parenthood with inbred ape-people.”

It bubbles up out of him before he can stop it this time, the laugh. “I believe you, don’t worry.” Essay in his bag, keys, cane, and he’s finished. Lewis steps back out of the way as he shuts the office door behind them. “Usually you’re less scattered.”

“I know y’all call me Luna Lovegood, but seriously, I am usually more sane-sounding. Ish.” She unzips her backpack. “Anyway, like—sorry for invading.”

Matt locks the door again. She’s standing close enough that when he turns, his arm brushes her shoulder. Judging by the way she jumps, he doesn’t think it was intentional on her part. “You didn’t invade, it’s fine.”

“And for the record, you’re really gonna be okay if I show up at Josie’s sometimes? Only I don’t think Foggy will let me get out of it, but I don’t want to, you know, do that awkward thing where I keep showing up where I’m not wanted, or violate some kind of secret TA-student fraternization rule or whatever that I’ll get you in trouble for, or—” She stops. “You’re laughing at me. You’re _mean_.”

“I’m not laughing at you, I swear,” he says, but he _is_ laughing, and it _is_ because of her, and he can’t really help it. “I’m not.”

“You _are_.” She sounds delighted instead of irritated. “You are _totally_ laughing at me. Breaking news: Matt Murdock is an asshole who likes to laugh at people with foot-in-mouth syndrome. You also, possibly, kick puppies.”

“When I can figure out where they are, yeah.”

“ _Mean_.” Lewis knocks into his shoulder, and the smell of coffee whacks him in the face. She must have come here from the Starbucks on campus. “But yeah, you’re—seriously, you’re okay with it?”  

“The rest of the TAs might kick me out of the secret clubhouse, but they’re all boring, anyway. All they talk about is a bunch of TV shows I can’t watch.”

She snorts. “You’re really sure you’ll live?”

“I’m really sure I’ll live.”

“Cool.” She steps away, and there’s an odd sense of loss when she does, as if she’s peeled part of him away with her. “I have to catch Tammany before she bolts to the gym, so I’d better jet.” Lewis pauses, and she sounds almost shy when she says, “I guess I’ll see you later.”

“Don’t be late to class tomorrow.”

“Can’t promise I’ll be early, Tucker gets there at like…ten ‘til and I don’t want to have to deal with his sorry ass until I absolutely have to. But I won’t be late.” She clicks her tongue against her teeth. “ _Ma’a salaama._ ”

She’s vanished before he can even really turn the corner, and he doesn’t realize he’s still smiling until Walters (she teaches his Family Law class) stops while calling roll to ask what the hell kind of expression he’s making.

.

.

.

Considering how long Matt and Foggy have basically been the other’s only friend—they both have other friends, but it’s not quite the same, really; friendly acquaintances more than actual friendships—it’s an almost terrifyingly easy transition to adopt Lewis into the circle.

Lewis—“Jesus, every time you say that I think I’m back in high school, my name is Darcy, I _know_ you can say it”—seems to be part of the same breed, though. She has a bit of a reputation as a loner, from what he can tell. She doesn’t seem to be a part of any of the study groups that Walters keeps pushing the 1Ls to form (though she stays fairly high in class rankings, not first or second or third, but close underneath them nonetheless); she’s never talking to anyone before class starts (though she does keep making pointed comments under her breath at overheard conversations, which make him choke); and the vast majority of the other 1Ls seem to either drive her crazy, or drive her crazi _er_.

“Like—it’s not as though I don’t want friends or anything,” she says, while they’re sitting in the on-campus Starbucks, and Foggy’s helping her go over word definitions. “It’s just like—God, how do I say this without sounding like an asshole? Most people are _really dumb_.”

Foggy gags on his coffee. Judging by the unhappy noises Darcy makes, after, he also spits it onto the table.

“I mean it though,” she continues, once they’ve cleaned up the coffee mess and Matt has shielded his braille reader from further spray. “You’d think anyone who could pass the LSAT would be smart enough to hold a decent conversation. But like—none of them seem to know what they really want to do. And some of them are only really here because their parents want them to be here, so they don’t care, really. And some of them are probably sociopaths. And others are either sexist, or gross, or sexist _and_ gross, and I figure, you know, either avoid everyone who could piss me off, or get pissed off and go right back to where I ended up back in undergrad, which was completely ignored. Better to be alone by choice rather than alone by enforced isolation.”

(She doesn’t talk much about that, aside from generalities. He gets the feeling that she picked a fight with someone, and it backfired in a really bad way. There aren’t many Culver grads at Columbia, though, so there’s no way to tell, and besides—it’s up to her whether or not she wants to tell them.)

The only person she really seems to talk to (besides them) is her ex-boss from her internship, and those conversations always seem to go one of two ways. The first: she spends the entire time making noises of comprehension that are utterly false, and throwing in odd phrases like “so the shiny purple thing,” or “I left it next to your sonic screwdriver—no, I know it’s not a sonic screwdriver, but you can’t tell me it doesn’t—just go look next to the sonic screwdriver, because I am _absolutely certain_ that it has not been touched in the six months since I—yep, told you,” or even “you mean that fire hazard you built with PVC pipe and duct tape?” which does not bode well for Culver’s stellar reputation for scientific achievement. The second option (and one which occurs with greater and greater frequency as they get closer to December) is that she just says, “Jane. Jane. _Jane._ When did you last sleep?” over and over, at increasing volume, until the person on the other end of the line finally catches on.

He can’t quite remember when her number was put into his phone, or when she started bringing coffee to his off-time office hours. (Usually students don’t show up on Friday evenings, ever, but he has to have three available times a week, and Friday was the only other day he could make work for him. Usually he uses it to go over the reading for his Family Law class with Walters. Darcy starts showing up about two weeks into October, just after the midterm, though she usually doesn’t have questions.

“You look pathetic sitting in here on your own,” she says, and spins the chair around so she can straddle it. Matt ducks his head to hide how the corner of his mouth twitches.

“My door is made of wood, you couldn’t see through it. And there are no windows.”

“Fine, I didn’t actually _see._ But there is an aura of gloom around this corner of the building this time of day, and the only possible source is you. And since I’m made of sunshine and fucking unicorns or whatever, I thought I’d help.”

“You’d have a horn,” he says, “if you were made of unicorns.”

“You don’t know that I don’t,” Darcy replies, but her voice shakes the way it does when she’s trying desperately not to laugh, and when she puts her hands on the table, she tweaks his thumb with two fingers. “Don’t knock my horn, Murdock.”

After they meet up with Foggy, and though there’s a bit of a question in the way Foggy says, “Oh, hey, you—both. Two people. Who are _both_ here. Okay, then,” it starts to become a habit. And then it kind of becomes a ritual, because she starts bringing coffee. And then it’s commonplace, and he doesn’t really remember having an empty slot on Friday anymore.)

He can’t quite remember _any_ of it, really, but it happens so smoothly that within two months it feels strange to mention times without her, which—should probably tip him off to the fact that he’s too close to one of his students. It _does_ tip him off, if he’s honest, but he’s developed a bit of a system when it comes to Darcy Lewis. Foggy tells him it’s mostly bullshit, but it makes sense. It _does_. They never talk about Matt’s Crim class (it’s technically her Crim class too, but Matt TA’s for it, so it’s _his_ in a way that can’t really be explained). Walters doesn’t let him touch most of the grading, which he’s more than all right with—it would mean listening to hours of theory and analysis that he’d done himself a good two years ago, and isn’t too inclined to repeat—but he’s always careful to make sure that they don’t talk much in class. Which, again, Darcy perpetuates, because aside from Walters, she doesn’t talk to _anyone_ in class (unless she’s arguing with them, anyway, which is astounding to witness. She’s going to be a hell of an attorney if she can talk rings around people this early.). They’re friends, not anything more, but that doesn’t stop him from being just as careful not to mention it to any of the other students that he’s meeting up with her. Nor does he mention it to Walters, because he would actually like to survive until the bar exam.

He also doesn’t touch her. Sometimes he has to, like if they’re someplace on campus or out in the city that he’s never visited before, and there are too many people to justify the cane. But he doesn’t touch her if he can help it, not even if it’s just him and her and Foggy sitting in Josie’s, or in some coffee shop off campus, out of range of anyone who might try and read it the wrong way.

The thing about that, though, is that not touching her is getting incredibly difficult, just because she ghosts him. It’s the only word he can really think of for the barely-there trace of fingertips to his shoulder when she passes behind his chair, or to his wrist when she puts a coffee down. She never hesitates about it (and that in and of itself is distracting, because usually he can feel hesitation in people when they touch him, and there’s none of that with her, not even in the very first moment) but she never actually really touches him, either, and the dichotomy is distracting.

At first, he thinks it’s because she’s trying her best not to touch him, either, but then a few days before Halloween she slides in next to him in a booth at some café and she’s just drunk enough that she kind of leans on him the whole time, so it can’t be that. He realizes eventually that she’s trying not to push beyond some boundary he doesn’t actually have. Which somehow makes it _more_ difficult not to lean back up into her when she sets her palm to his shoulder, or when she pats her hand to the space between his shoulder-blades as she passes behind him, because not only does she seem to think that neither he nor Foggy actually want her there (the phrase “if you’re sure you don’t mind” crops up more often than he likes to hear), but she also seems to have convinced herself that he’s uncomfortable with her touching him. (Which, again, if he’s being honest—and this time it’s debatable—isn’t true. If he’s going to be _brutally_ honest, his skin prickles and burns wherever she ghosts him, even if it’s through layers of clothes. But that’s something he keeps to himself, because it’s only real if he says it aloud. Until that moment, it’s nothing more than his overactive imagination.)

Something about the idea of her thinking he doesn’t want her to touch him gnaws away at him, though, scratchy, like straw in his clothes. So one morning (a Saturday, and they’re all up too early even though it’s barely eleven am) he goes with her to grab the coffees off the counter, and steals hers. It’s easy, because she’s the only one of the three of them who carries around her own mug. Darcy makes a shocked little sound (and an incredibly dangerous little sound, because it hooks into his head with the tenacity of a wildcat) and says, “What the _fuck_ , Matt.”

“Hm?” He sips at the coffee again. He really shouldn’t be enjoying this as much as he is. “Is this supposed to be pumpkin spice?”

“No, because it’s not October anymore, weirdo.” She sputters a little. “You stole my coffee.”

“Yours usually smells better than mine,” he says, and judging by the next noise she makes (high and irritable and entirely uncaffeinated) she kind of wants to hit him. “I thought you were the one that wanted me to order something other than black coffee.”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“There you go, then.”

He offers her the mug. There’s an incredibly long moment when he thinks that he’s overstepped. Then she takes it from him, and says, “You could have just asked, y’know.”

“I’ll try to remember that next time,” he says, and this time when she shoves him she uses her whole hand, palm and fingers pressed flush into his shoulder, and _that’s_ what he was looking for. (Possibly there might be something wrong with him, but he doesn’t particularly care at the moment.)

“ _Weirdo_ ,” she says, laughing. “Buy your own damn coffee.”

“It’s safer to live life vicariously,” Matt tells her, and for that, she keeps pushing at him all the way back to the booth. He can practically feel it when Foggy’s eyebrows climb up into his hair (there’s a certain tone to the “oh, _really_ ,” that emerges when Darcy tries to explain why she’s laughing that Foggy only ever uses in conjunction with “I’m _really raising my eyebrows right now_ , Matt”) but he can’t bring himself to regret it.

(It gets to the point that she just starts handing him her coffee cups, though she always does it with the most put-upon little sigh, like he’s ruining her whole day. After winter break, he starts wondering—only in stops and starts, in the moments where he’s handing off the mug, and she takes it—if she’s ever careful to wipe the porcelain where his mouth touched before she takes a drink herself. Some part of him hopes that she doesn’t.)

He makes a lot of rules for himself, about Darcy Lewis, but that’s the most important one. She touches him, but he won’t touch her. That’s the one rule he _refuses_ to break.

Well, until he does.

.

.

.

It’s actually an accident. The touching thing. An accident that transforms into something he doesn’t even think about it. It’s just something that evolves, organic, like a Darwinic formula for the formation of the species.

It’s not Foggy’s idea to go out drinking this time, but Darcy’s. “My week,” she says in the library one night, “has been fucking terrible, and I would really like to forget it.” So Foggy picks a bar (one they’ve visited before; it’s not too close to the school, but it’s not that far away from Hell’s Kitchen or from Columbia either, kind of trapped between the two) and they meet her there, because apparently it’s one of _those_ weeks. She doesn’t ever get blasted, Darcy—he actually can’t remember ever seeing her more than a little tipsy—but she’s still not entirely sober when she waves them over to a table in the corner. Judging by the smell, she’s replaced vodka with whiskey.

Foggy whistles. “What brought this on?”

“Like I said, shit week.” She heaves a breath. “I ordered for you, so you have to sit now.”

“Ask and ye shall receive, oh pilgrim.” Foggy takes the opposite side, and he waffles for exactly two seconds before slipping in beside Darcy. The smell of the whiskey sour is stronger over here, but not overpowering. She can’t have been drinking very long. “Your definition of a shit week is different than my definition. Usually I go with really fancy margaritas, the ones they serve in like—ice cream sundae dishes. Those work really well.”

“See, the thing with whiskey is that it _punishes_ you while you’re drinking it,” Darcy says with grim satisfaction. “Which is why I’m going with whiskey.”

“That sounds more like Matt’s style of living than yours.” Foggy doesn’t even flinch when Matt kicks him. “Seriously, your SOS is troubling. Especially considering your resting bitchface has been upped to resting serial-killer-face.”

“Thanks, that’s—I appreciate that.”

“What I want to know is whether or not we should find an obscure location to bury bodies,” Matt says. She laughs once, sharp.

“I mean, that’d be better.” She rocks her glass back and forth. “My mom called me today, that’s all. It was kind of shit. And Tucker’s been gross all week, so it all piled up.”

“Mama Lewis not much of a mama bear?”

“Mama Lewis called asking for help paying the electric bill because Mama Lewis’s sketch boyfriend ran off with half our shit and she lost her fucking job,” Darcy snaps. On the other side of the table, Foggy lets out a breath.

“I sense stories. You said you ordered for us?”

“Yeah, a while ago. I think they thought the drinks were for me, and decided to cut off the tiny coed before she managed to screw herself over too thoroughly.” She shifts. “I’ll go with you, I know which bartender I ordered from.”

“No, it’s fine. Just—please tell me it was the one with purple hair. I feel like I can bond with that one. She lets her freak flag fly.”

“Tell her I said hi,” Darcy says. “Her name’s Eleonora, she’s dating one of my roommates.”

“Score,” says Foggy, and vanishes. Next to him, Darcy rests her head on the table, and groans.

“Is there any way I can possibly go back in time and fix things before they happen? Because I feel like a lot of the problems I have had in my life would like—magically vanish if I did that.”

“Possibly, but it would be highly complicated. Plus you’d need a time machine.” Matt cocks his head. “You don’t talk about her much. Your mother.”

“No, there’s—there are reasons for that.” She rocks her glass back and forth again. “Like—no. I’m trying to get better at oversharing, and you do _not_ need to be treated to the Lorna Lewis Special. Actually, it’s a thing no one needs to be treated to, including many Lewises.”

“Sounds familiar.” And it does, because he highly doubts stories about stitching up his father at three in the morning with whiskey burning on his tongue is something that anyone sane really wants to hear. “You okay?”

“Debatable. With more alcohol I may improve.” Ice clinks in her glass. “God, whiskey is _nasty_. Why do I drink it? Why did I decide to drink this?”

“Punishment was mentioned, I think.”

“Oh, right.” Darcy squashes herself into the corner of the seat, curling around her whiskey sour. “Yeah, that makes sense. I haven’t even had all of this, I should not feel this weird. I’m not a lightweight.”

She’s not, which surprises a lot of people. “How much have you had?”

“I mean, I wasn’t—I didn’t have a _lot_ before I came here, but I had some.” Abruptly, her tone shifts. “Jesus, I really shouldn’t even be drinking this. Alcoholism is—”

She stops.

“Runs in my family too,” Matt says, and centimeter by centimeter, she relaxes. “My grandmother was really bad. She died before I turned nine, but she was vicious-nasty when she was out of it. My dad used to put the liquor on the top shelf, because that way she couldn’t see it. Her eyes went bad early, so.” He taps the side of his glasses with his cane. “That runs in the family too. Though mine was more related to stupidity than genetics.”

“Ah,” she says, and goes quiet again. Foggy’s returned and departed (“—phone call, sorry—”) before she says, “You know, the thing with my mom is that—I still can’t say no to her. There are so many things about her life that have fucked her over. Like—I was unplanned. And she’s depressed, doesn’t go to therapy. Doesn’t have health insurance so she can’t afford the meds for it. With the new medicare plan coming through, she should get help soon, which is—which is wonderful, but there’s still time before that. She can’t hold down a good job and all her boyfriends are shit, and my grandmother died when I was nine, so she doesn’t have anyone to help her but me, really. And she’s my mom, you know? So I love her, even when she’s terrible, because I know half the shit she says isn’t—isn’t _actually_ her. It’s the depression talking, or the drinking. But sometimes it’s just—it’s hard. And having Tucker and his stupid friends show up to Walters’ office hours as I’m leaving didn’t—didn’t help.”

Walters is Darcy’s advisor, he remembers. “Were you telling her about—?”

“No, we were talking classes for next semester. Steve Rogers is offering a Constitutional Law class, and if you don’t waitlist early for him you never get in, he’s a fucking legend. But like—we’re reading about Moore this week, and Henrietta Lacks, and that on top of Tucker on top of my mom just kind of broke me mentally, so. It’s, you know. A thing.” She turns in her seat. “So, how was _your_ hopefully much-more-stellar week? Please say it was much more stellar, my name’s down for the moping corner.”

She says it all very fast, and very thickly, like she’s trying not to cry. Matt rolls his cane between his fingers, just for a moment. When he sets it aside, and puts his hands on the table, he knocks into her free fist. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s—it’s fine.” She clears her throat. “Your drink’s six inches forward from your right.”

He nods once, and doesn’t reach for it.

“She was fired again,” Darcy spits. “Because—because she’s depressed. They don’t _say_ that, they never say that, but it’s like—she missed work one too many times because she couldn’t get out of fucking bed, and they _fired_ her. And sometimes I hate her for being how she is, which is sick, because she can’t _help_ being depressed, like you can’t help—having cancer or whatever, you can’t _help_ depression, you can’t _ask_ for it, nobody in their right mind _wants_ to be depressed. But she is, and she keeps losing her job, because she’s not _dependable_ or whatever. It’s _bullshit_ , and I want to—I want to fly down to Georgia and smash their foreheads together, her old bosses, because she needs that fucking job to pay her electric bill, and her water bill, and to buy _food_. It may pay for shit but at least it pays for those. Or it _would,_ if they hadn’t fired her. And if—if it keeps on going like this she’s either going to be dead in a ditch or—or dead in someone else’s bed and I won’t know where she is until they call me down to identify the body.”

Jesus Christ. “Darcy.”

“And it’s not _fair_ ,” she says again. “It’s not _fair_ that people can’t get help when they need it, that—that they get blamed for shit that isn’t their fault. She’s _sick_ , but _nobody_ will see that, not—not our neighbors, or the government, or her bosses, or _anyone_ , they just—they look at her and they think she’s lazy when she _can’t do it_ , when she’s so, so sick she can’t even breathe through the darkness sometimes, I’ll go for weeks without hearing from her and half the time I’m not even sure if she’s alive, I have to _call her neighbors_ to go and make sure that she hasn’t—hasn’t taken pills or whatever. Every day she stays alive is a fucking miracle, and nobody but me sees that. _Nobody_ but me. Because god bless the United States of fucking America, but depressed people should just hoist themselves up with their goddamn fucking bootstraps and _deal_ with their shit, right? Just like people with cancer should just pray that shit away. Because that _always_ works. And—and I’m so sorry I’m telling you this, you don’t deserve to hear this, I’m just—I’m _tired_ , I’m so goddamn tired of being the one person who fights for her, because she doesn’t—she fights so hard to stay alive every day, but she won’t fight for _herself_ , and I just—sometimes I want to burn the whole fucking system to the ground, because it’s supposed to fix things, and it _never does_ , how is anything supposed to get better if no one _does_ anything, and it’s not just my mom, it’s everyone, it’s all—all the vets on the street with PTSD and all the dumped psych patients, everyone who can’t afford their meds, everyone who—who dies when they could have been helped, _all_ of it, it’s so fucked up, and I can’t—”

“ _Darcy_ ,” he says again, and finds her hand without thinking about it, without even considering what it would mean. She tenses up when he touches her, and then relaxes all at once, turning her hand palm up and gripping his so hard that it probably leaves marks behind. This, he thinks, is why she’ll do well in social justice. She cares about the broken people. _I’m so goddamn tired of being the one person who fights_ , and he knows that feeling, he _knows_ that, because sometimes it feels like you’re the only one in the world who gives a damn, and it’s so exhausting he could scream. _You care so much,_ he almost says. _I didn’t think anyone could ever care so much._ “What does she need help with? Your mother.”

She digs her nails into his knuckles. “You’re not white knighting me, Murdock, don’t you start.” 

“I’m not white knighting anyone.” Metal presses cold into his fingers from her rings. “And I can’t burn down the system for you, not yet, but—but I might be able to help you figure out what you can do. That’s all.”

She doesn’t let go. She doesn’t say anything for a long time, but she doesn’t let go. At least, not until Foggy laughs loudly at something Eleonora says (far too close, he’s _far_ too close, and Matt has _rules_ , for fuck’s sake, he thought he had rules until this moment, this instinct). Then she draws away. He curls his fingers on the tabletop.

“Watch _Tom and Jerry_ , first of all,” she says. “That’s—that’s always the first line of defense. Possibly ice cream will be involved. And then I have to rebudget. I can’t pay for all of her shit, but—but at least I can argue the electric company to a standstill. I’m good at that.”

“As someone who mediates your debates in class, yes. You are.”

It’s the first and only time she laughs all night, but it bursts like a firework, and some part of him purrs at the sound of it.

.

.

.

The thing is, in spite of what Foggy thinks, Matt knows exactly how unsubtle he’s being. He _knows_ how ridiculous all his logical contortionism is, even as he’s doing it. He knows that probably the only thing anyone would have to do to see right through him would be to just look at his face when she talks, about anything, really, Arabic pronunciation or social justice or the new TV show she started binging on. The latest homework assignment in her Civ Pro class. He knows exactly how pathetic it is, how fast he winds up tangled. For God’s sake, he _steals her coffee._ It’s ridiculous, and he knows how ridiculous it is, because he’s an adult, and he really should be able to just say, _Hello, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to kiss you, and I really want to know what you think of that._

(It’s the hardest when he goes on a tangent, about Thurgood Marshall or about corruption in the courts, in the police department, anywhere he looks—“I’m _blind_ and I can see it, Foggy, what kind of excuse does the rest of the world have?”—because she _listens._ She actually seems to listen. And he can hear echoes of himself in her, when she’s talking about land grabs and systemic racism and the latest cop-on-civilian shooting, about stories she hears on the ground in Columbia. He hears it, and he thinks, _Christ, you’re beautiful,_ and it’s a feeling he can’t shake, the gravitational pull of her. She’s beautiful and furious and he could look for centuries and never find someone like her, not ever again.)

But the thing is, he doesn’t. He should be able to, but he doesn’t. And he tells himself it’s because she’s his friend, and a 1L, and in his class, and a million other things—time, location, circumstance, situation—but he knows, truly, that what’s stopping him. He looks back at all the relationships he’s had in his life—not as many as Foggy seems to think, but still, a decent amount, even if none of them were serious—and he knows exactly how each of them failed, how much each singular failure was his fault. There are just some people who aren’t capable of keeping a steady relationship from imploding.

And that _is_ what he wants, with her. Or, at least, he wants _her_ , and not just the touch of her hand or the way she smells when she leans into him at a table. He wants those things, too, wants to know her favorite shade of lipstick and how it would taste, wants to sketch out the topography of her with his hands, but he wants the way she calls him at one in the morning to complain about her bullshit reading assignments, too. He wants her weird habit of pinching his thumb when she’s teasing him, like it’s a secret. He wants her barbed tongue and her biting jokes, the smiles he hears in her voice when she talks to him, her constant, curling frustration with everything that’s wrong with the world, all her righteous indignation. Like fire, he thinks, like a torch in the dark. He doesn’t just want part of her, and not temporarily. He wants all of her, and he wants her for as long as she’s willing to let him want her, and the magnitude of that is earth-shattering. Because if he fucks it up, then it won’t just be a relationship he loses. He would be losing _her_ , and that’s the last thing he wants.

So he keeps on going with his mental acrobatics, and when Foggy huffs at him and says, “ _Seriously_ , Matt, you realize how ridiculous you’re being, right?” all he does is nod once and say, “Yeah.” Because there’s nothing else to say about it.

.

.

.

Foggy’s birthday is in November, the last week before they really have to start paying attention and pretending they’ve been studying for finals, and even in their freshman year in undergrad they’d decided that that was probably the last night they could get away with getting really drunk and suffer no consequences. (It’s not as though they avoid getting really drunk _after_ Foggy’s birthday; they just usually regret it more.) Marci and Foggy are back on again, for reasons Matt’s not particularly inclined to explore, and so it’s the four of them (Matt, Darcy, and Foggy-and-Marci, who technically could count as one being in some ways) who meet up at a new bar near Columbia for Foggy’s “most celebrated date of—not nuptials, what the fuck is the word I’m looking for, Matt?”

“Natal emergence,” says Darcy, and even though she did the same thing six hours ago when she saw them on the commons, she still hugs Foggy tight enough to make him yelp. “Happy birthday, dude, again.”

“You’re friendly tonight,” Foggy says, sounding pleased. “Who put drugs in your coffee? Matt, did you put drugs in her coffee again, I swear to god—”

“No drugs were imbued besides happiness and possibly one or two drinks while I was waiting for you guys, because the bartender’s really pushy.” There’s always a little bit of an accent that slips forward into her voice when Darcy’s tipsy, something warm and afternoon-sun yellow. It’s soothing. She hums. “Which means he’s just your type, Marci.”

“Thank god,” Marci says, and she doesn’t even sound offended. “Can he make a martini?”

“He can make sweet, sweet love to a martini. Fly, my pretty, be free.”

Marci snorts. “Does that make you the wicked witch, or me?”

Darcy hums, happily. “Go get a martini and find out.”

“Where’s your usual biting tongue, Lewis?”

“Back in my empty glass, I think.” She bubbles a little. “They have _really_ nice vodka here. Like—well, it’s not _nice_ vodka because I can’t afford nice vodka, but it’s _cold_ vodka, which means it tastes better. You know I’m a fool for potatoes.”

“You’re a fool for everything, dragonlet,” Marci says, and to Matt’s _complete and utter shock_ , it’s actually affectionate. Someone knocks into his back with their shoulder, and apologizes profusely. “Come on, Foggy-bear. For once, I will condescend to buy you a drink.”

Foggy, who sounds slightly shell-shocked, says, “I am more than okay with this.”

Marci’s heels click away. As soon as he can’t hear them anymore, he realizes that Darcy’s shaking with laughter. She grabs onto his elbow, leaning into him, hiding her face in his sleeve. “Oh my god _._ You should have seen the look on your faces when she smiled, I thought Foggy was going to _die_.”

“So just to clarify,” Matt says, because now he’s genuinely unsure, “I—did actually show up with Foggy and Marci, right? Not Foggy and some kind of imposter?”

“I know.” She drawls it out, _I knowwwww_ , and bounces on the balls of her feet. She’s taller than usual. He thinks she might be wearing heels. “It freaked me out the first time, too, but she’s actually really cool. Like—I was dealing with something hard last week—”

“Did something happen with your mom?”

“No, she’s—she’s fine, sort of, doing better. Anyway, I ran into Marci on campus, and I thought she was going to be terrible about it but she was super-nice and gave me some really good advice, and then we went to look at shoes. And it feels really strange to say it, but it was awesome.”

“I still kind of want to perform some kind of scientific test. Just to make sure she’s not a shape-shifting alien. Or a pod person.”

Darcy nips her fingernails into his thumb. “Or you could trust me.”

“You might also be a pod person.”

She mulls that over, thoughtfully. She seems to have forgotten that her fingers are still curled around his wrist. “How do I know _you’re_ not a pod person?”

“I’m not the one who just willingly admitted to enjoying shoe shopping with Marci Stahl.”

“Daughter of fire and blood,” Darcy says. “Mother of dragons.”

“Well, that’s definitely something the real Darcy Lewis would say.”

She laughs, and hooks her arm through his, tugging him through the crowd. “If you want, I can list every person in my Torts class in order of how much they irritate me.”

“Proof of legitimacy accepted.”

“Excellent. Does that mean we get secret code-names to make sure neither of us are pod-people at any point in future?”

“Hadn’t really thought about it, actually.”

They’ve nearly caught up with Marci and Foggy when she says, “My grandmother called me _lapushka_ , when I was a kid.”

“ _Lapushka_?”

“Like—the literal translation is _little paw_? It’s supposed to remind you of a kitten or a puppy or something.” She’s silent for a moment. “That could work as a secret password, I guess.”

There’s an uncomfortable squeeze in his throat, just for a moment. “Say it one more time?”

“ _Lapushka,_ ” she says, and she repeats it twice more before he finally (somehow) gets the pronunciation right. (He took Spanish, not Russian, and it’s pathetic, but now he kind of wishes he’d done the opposite.) “That’s…I haven’t thought about that in ages.”

“It’s something your grandmother said?”

“Mm. I don’t remember a lot about her anymore, but—but I remember that.” She’s quiet again. He counts four heartbeats and a shrill laugh from Marci before she says, “You could be _kotik_ , maybe. If we wanted to go the Russian route, anyway.”

“What’s it mean?”

Darcy makes an odd trilling noise in the back of her throat. “You have to promise not to laugh.”

“Why would I laugh?”

“It’s silly, that’s all. Actually—yeah, never mind, forget that, we can figure out something else—”

“Darcy,” he says, and she stops. “I promise not to laugh.”

 She’s so still for a moment that she almost seems to vibrate. Then she heaves a breath. “Basically all it means is, like—it’s a diminutive form of _cat._ But I mean—it’s kind of weird for me to say, but sometimes you remind me of a cat? Because like—people think cats are really aloof, and grumpy and stuff, and sometimes they can be major assholes, but they’re also just—they never let anyone tell them what to do, or what they _can’t_ do? Which always reminds me of you. And with cats, if they like you it feels like a victory, because they don’t _have_ to. They can get along fine on their own, you know? But like—if they do like you, then you know it’s real. Dogs love everyone, but cats make the choice, you know, whether or not they want to trust you, or if they like you. They _pick_ the people they want to spend time with, so if they like you, that’s—that’s important. And it means more than, you know, people want to say. It—kind of means a lot, actually.”

He says nothing. He’s pretty sure that if he starts to talk right now, he’ll wind up saying something he can’t take back.

“I told you it was silly,” Darcy says, and she sounds more than slightly miserable. “I just—it was the first thing that popped into my head, that’s all. And obviously this was like—a joke, and I took it way too seriously, but—”

“ _Lapushka,_ ” he says again, and Darcy shuts up. “And _kotik._ ”

“Yeah.”

“Those, uh. Those work.” Matt clears his throat. “We should probably figure out if Foggy’s a pod person. Just a thought.”

“Probably,” says Darcy, and he wonders if he’s imagining how her voice catches a little. “And before Marci gets him drunk.”

“That would be the smartest option.”

It should end there, really, that toppling on the edge of possibility. But it doesn’t. (He works out later that that was probably Marci’s plan all along, but at the time he’s still stuck on _and it means more than, you know, people want to say_ , so he’s not paying enough attention to realize that.) The bartender (clearly recognizing the potential for Foggy’s drunken shenanigans even before he touched a drop) had shuffled them off to a rounded booth, and so now that Darcy’s skirting the edge of actual drunkenness (and Foggy has already plunged in with both feet) Matt and Marci have blocked the exits. Darcy, trapped between Matt and Foggy, has shifted to stick her feet in Foggy’s lap, which has also resulted in her spine bracing Matt’s arm as she tries to explain the difference between institutionalized sexism and individualized misandry to an intoxicated Foggy. His hand’s almost asleep, but he doesn’t particularly want to shift her.

“There’s one thing I don’t really get,” Marci says, snappy and brusque as ever. “Which is something I have wondered since I was like…four, and I had my blind uncle putting his weird cigarette hands on my face because apparently he’d never _seen me before_ , which, yeah, not something I want to experience again. But like—how the fuck do you know what people look like?”

She kicks him in the ankle as she says it, slightly harder than necessary, like she’s trying to make sure he’s awake. Matt kind of wants to kick her back, but he also doesn’t want to miss. So he keeps a straight face instead. “Your uncle was blind?”

“He did some stupid shit apparently. Wrapped his car around a tree while he was drunk off his ass and woke up with no sight.” She sucks her teeth. “Which is not what you did, according to Foggy. You, oh resident saint, were a hero and wound up with bleach in your eyes or something. Which, sucks for you, but doesn’t exactly answer my question.”

That actually explains why Marci has never once asked about how he does things. He’d wondered. “And you never asked your uncle?”

“My mother seemed to think it was rude to ask how blind people did things. And then he died or whatever, so I tried Google, but like—having someone touch your face doesn’t really make sense to me, because especially if you were born blind, how would you get the mental cues to be like _oh, this person has a round face_?” She stops. “Which was _not_ an invitation for you, Murdock. I don’t want you touching my face, no offense.”

“I’m not sure I would want to touch your face, anyway,” Matt replies. “No offense.”

“Probably wise,” Darcy says from somewhere near his shoulder. “She might bite your hands off.”

“Please, that’s unhygienic. I’d use a straight razor for that.” Marci’s silent for a moment. “But yeah, I assume that like—what do you do, even? I just remember standing there for a while and thinking that I was going to poison my mother for making me do it, because I’d never met my uncle before that point and he was always kind of gross.”

“You don’t have to answer that,” Foggy says, though he sounds like he’s trying not to smile. Sometimes Matt wonders precisely what Foggy’s thinking, especially when it comes to Marci. “If you don’t want to.”

“No, it’s fine.” Blood rushes back into his arm when Darcy shifts away. “Better than Googling things and getting the wrong answer.”  

“Blah blah blah, what do you even do?” Marci kicks him again, more gently this time. “Explain.”

“I’ve never met someone who was blind from birth who does it, really,” Matt says. As is usual with Marci, he’s not sure whether or not he’s angry, or just bemused. “There’s no point, since like you said, the mental cues brought on by remembered vision wouldn’t apply to them. And most of the people I met in physio didn’t do it, either. It’s not like—it’s kind of a myth, honestly.”

“You do it, though,” Foggy says. Matt kind of wants to kick him, now. “I mean, you did it to me, which, weird. Sorry dude, but—yeah, it was kind of weird.”

“I seem to remember that I told you it would be, considering it _doesn’t actually work._ ”

“I was _drunk_ , don’t hold that against me.”

“What do you mean it doesn’t work?” Marci’s voice lifts. “Are you telling me my uncle just like—touched my face for no reason?”

“I mean, I don’t know your uncle. But it’s possible. He could also have thought it would help. Depends on how long he’d been blind, by that point.”

There’s silence for a moment. Then: “Dammit, I _knew_ he was a pervert.”

“I don’t want to meet your family, dear,” says Foggy. “I hope that’s not offensive.”

“Anyway, if it’s a myth, why do you do it?” Marci taps her heel against his shin again. “Is this one of those things about your sex life that I don’t actually want to know about but somehow am told anyway? Because if it is, forget I asked.”

Foggy coughs.

“It’s not—no. Sometimes people just ask. And it’s—easier to just follow along, instead of arguing about it. For some reason most people have this certain—idea that when people are blind, or if they go blind, they get sharper senses and better mental imaging skills to make up for it, but we don’t, really. I just don’t always have enough energy to fight about it.” He muses for a moment. “Besides, sometimes—it doesn’t help, like I said, but sometimes you can get a vague idea of certain shapes, which can add to a picture. Mostly I just have images in my head, though, and those are fine.”

“What do you mean, vague idea?”

Darcy makes a protesting sound from next to him, but Matt shrugs. It’s refreshing, in an odd way, to talk to someone who just doesn’t give a shit about awkwardness. Though he’s not exactly sure how to explain it in a way that doesn’t sound odd. “I don’t know if it works like this for other blind people, but it’s as if—little things, sort of. If their ears are pierced, or their eyebrow. How high their cheekbones are. It doesn’t create a picture, but it adds parts into whatever image I already have of them. Sometimes it works. Usually it doesn’t. It’s better if I have a spoken description to add to it.” He cocks his head. “I thought Foggy’s hair would be longer.”

“It _was_ longer then,” Foggy says, and he sounds a little offended. “Wait, what do you mean you thought it was _longer_? It was already like hobo long— _what did you think of me?_ ”

“Anyway, like I said, it doesn’t do anything for most people. It’s too intimate, and it’s not like you can actually use whatever little bits of information you can pick up from doing it to make an actual cohesive picture.” He shrugs again. “Voices are easier.”

“Huh.” Marci sucks her teeth again. “So like—what kind of person do you see when you hear me?”

“Do you want something nice or do you want the truth?”

“What do you think?”

Well, that’s obvious. “You sound like a human velociraptor. Not—not skeletal or scaled or anything, but like you’re constantly hunting. Foggy’s told me what color your hair is and your eyes and everything, but—but those aren’t the first that come into my head when I hear you talking. I’m wondering whose jugular you’re aiming for.”

Marci’s quiet for one breath, two. Then: “Good.”

“Foggy, you’re dating a velociraptor,” Darcy says, and Foggy makes a noise like a motorcycle engine, which, how the hell does that have anything to do with anything? Matt doesn’t know.

“What about Foggy? Without the awkward animal metaphors, because please, I sleep with this man, and would not like to have that image in my head if he’s going down on me.”

Someone gags. Next to him, Darcy starts giggling, and hides in his shoulder again. “And _that’s_ something I never, ever wanted to know.”

“Murdock, c’mon.  What does Foggy-bear sound like?”

Matt leans back into the booth. This could become exceptionally awkward exceptionally quickly, but at the moment, he’s pretty sure Foggy’s too drunk to care. And he _knows_ Marci won’t let it go. “I don’t know. Kind of—he has a voice that makes him sound younger than he is, I guess. I don’t know if that’s how he looks, too, but it makes me think of people that people are always surprised about, when it comes to how old they are.” He considers. “Basically that. Younger than he is. He’s always sounded like that, though.”

“And after the totally-heterosexual face-touching experiment?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a bit rounder. But that’s about it.”

“I have long since come to terms with my kind-of-roundness,” says Foggy, content.

“What about with Lewis?” Marci says, and next to him Darcy freezes, like someone’s injected liquid nitrogen into her. “Can’t tell me you don’t have an image for her, if you have one for me.”

He’s very glad, in that moment, that he’s wearing his glasses. “I mean—I hear her and I think Darcy, that’s all. I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Come on,” says Marci, and Darcy scoots away from Matt, just a little, just enough. “You really don’t have an image for her?”

“Marci,” says Darcy in a low voice.

His throat scrapes a little. “It’s okay. If you don’t mind.”

“Why would _I_ mind?” She sounds genuinely puzzled, but also a little embarrassed. “I just—yeah, no, if it doesn’t bother you, go ahead.”

“Darcy—”

“It’s fine. I want to know, now.” And even if she’s pulled back, she has a cast to her voice that’s all bronze stubbornness, which means he’s fucked. “What do I look like?”

 _Like bright colors_ , he thinks, and it almost makes him jump. _Bright colors and curving edges that can cut if you don’t handle them right._ Like retracted claws and fingers to the back of his neck. That’s what she looks like, but that’s not something he can _explain._ He can’t even explain all of that to himself, let alone to anyone else. Marci’s easy, Foggy’s easy. Darcy is—complicated.

“Matt?” Darcy says, and he realizes that he’s been quiet for too long in the same instant she rests two fingers to his wrist. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” He clears his throat. “I don’t—nobody’s ever really described you, to me, so I don’t—I don’t have a clear picture. But you’re always smiling.”

Darcy quivers, just a little, like she’s itching to move. “Really?”

“I mean—” He’s floundering for words, and he’s usually so good at them; why can’t he think of anything to say? “I know you’re shorter than I am, and that your hair is long and it curls a little because you complain, and I know you wear glasses, but other than that I just—I think of you smiling.”

Her fingernails bite into his wrist, not painful, just a little sting. “Oh.”

There’s a pause. Then Foggy clears his throat. “Marce, will you come with me up to the bar for a second?”

“Hm?” Marci sounds pleased with herself. “Of course, Foggy-bear.”

“Please don’t call me that here.”

“But you’re all right with it everywhere _else._ ”

He wonders if she can feel the way his heart is flickering, if his pulse is giving him away, as Marci and Foggy slip away from the table. Darcy doesn’t let go of his wrist. She seems to be debating about something. There are certain qualities to her silences that speak more than any of her words.

“Do a lot of people ask you to learn their faces?” she asks, and that’s not—quite what he expected. He tips his head, thinking.

“Not really. A lot of people think they’d make me uncomfortable if they ask, and the ones that do are usually just looking for an excuse to—hm.” Matt clears his throat again. “Usually it’s an excuse. But like I said, it’s not totally useless. Sometimes it helps, a little. Just usually it doesn’t.”

“I wonder how that rumor was started in the first place, though,” Darcy says. “A lot of people I know believe it, so like—it must have started somewhere.”

“Don’t ask me, I have no idea.” 

She’s quiet again. She’s just close enough that when she nods, he can feel her doing it, a bob up and down, like she’s made some kind of decision. “Do you mind if I try?”

His mouth dries up. “Try what?”

“I mean, it must have come from somewhere.” She’s not supposed to sound logical right now. He’s not entirely sure what she should sound like, after asking _hey, can I touch your face_ , but it’s not supposed to be logical. “And as a seeing person sitting with a blind person, I feel like we’d be good test subjects. Especially since I’m slightly drunk, and thus can, you know, not feel guilty about asking.”

“You don’t have to feel guilty about asking me things,” he says, without thinking, and she nudges him in the ribs.

“So it’s okay?”

 _No_ , he thinks, and shuts his eyes. _Yes. No. I don’t know._ “I don’t know how well it’ll work. You know what I look like.”

“Which is why you’re going to try me, after,” she says, and that, right there—that’s not what he signed on for. “But only if you’re okay with it, like I said.”

Marci and Foggy are still doing whatever it is they’re doing over by the bar. Matt doesn’t really want to know, because Darcy’s turned, and her knees are bumping into his leg, and he gets the feeling she’s staring, unblinking, just waiting. She still hasn’t let go of his wrist. Matt wets his lips, and leans back into the vinyl cushion again. “Yeah. I mean—sure. If you want to try.”

Darcy shifts, and lets go. She ghosts his shoulder. “I’m gonna take your glasses, okay?”

He can take them off himself. Still, he nods. Darcy shifts around again. He thinks she might be on her knees on the booth seat, just a little bit taller than him, now. She rests one finger to the edge of his ear in a warning (and it _does not_ make the hair on the back of his neck stand on end) before she tugs them away, setting them aside. “So, uh.” She coughs, once. “I’m closing my eyes now, which means if I stab you somewhere, it’s officially not my fault. Hold still, yeah?”

“I don’t know if that’s how fault works,” Matt says, or starts to say, but then her thumb brushes over the edge of his mouth, and he can’t find the words again.

He can kind of understand, now, why people were always unsettled, after they’d asked him to do this. This style of touch (her thumbs follow the lines of his nose and then swipe out, along his cheekbones, down his jaw), this is intimacy on a completely different level, something more than friendliness or desire or affection or anything that bundles along with them. (She rests her forefinger to the skin just beneath his eye, and then circles around to his eyebrow, up to his hairline. It’s not what he would have done—he could see himself feeling out the edges of her bones until the world ends—but when she presses her fingertip into his forehead and smooths away wrinkles he hadn’t realized were there, it doesn’t really matter all that much anymore.) This isn’t something that can be taken back, after it’s done. This is an exploration of matter and materialism, and even if it doesn’t build a picture, he still feels like he’s being sketched out all the same, like something about him is being uncovered and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. (He closes his eyes and she draws one fingertip along the line of his eyelashes, as if she’s searching for something, and it’s so carefully done that he almost doesn’t even feel it except for the way her thumb pushes into the skin beside his temple.)

He doesn’t want it to be left buried anymore.

(She puts her fingers to his mouth again, to his lips, and it’s all he can do not to—)

“I don’t know.” She’s close enough that he can feel her words against his cheek, how her voice cracks. “I mean—like you said. I—I know what you look like. I don’t know how it helps. Though—” Darcy sets one finger against his temple. “I didn’t know there was a scar here. And I can’t really see it, but—but I can feel it, if I focus. Is that what you mean by adding things?”

“Sort of.”

She draws away, and ghosts his cheek as she goes. Darcy sits back onto her heels, and lifts his hands to her shoulders, to her throat. “Your turn,” she says. “Just let me take off my glasses.”

“No.” He’s not sure why he’s so vehement about it, but she stills under his hands like she’s startled. “No, just—it’s okay. I can work around them. And you need them to see.”

She lets out a breath. He can feel her pulse in her throat, and it’s jumpy.

“Yeah,” she says. “I need them to see.”

(He thinks she might be smiling and he wants to trace out the contours of it with his fingertips—)

“So.” He wets his lips again, and closes his eyes. “Okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

Even though she says that, he can still feel her swallow hard when he traces his fingers from her shoulders up to her throat. Matt pauses, just for a moment. “If you’re not sure—”

“I said I’m okay, and I’m okay.” She pushes her thumb into his wrist, like it’s supposed to be there. “I’m ticklish, that’s all.”

Matt blinks once, slowly. When Darcy pulls her hand away, he gives in. Her jaw curves down to a bit of a point, not enough to be obvious, just enough that he can feel it. There’s a scar just on the underside of her chin, barely the size of his pinky fingernail. “Where’d you get this?”

“Biking accident when I was little.” He can feel her lips moving as she speaks, which is—he doesn’t know. Her hands clench up against his knee when he draws his fingers up and over the edges of her mouth, to the divot between the point of her nose and her upper lip. “My grandmother—mm. I can’t talk with your finger there.”

His mouth curves up into a smile just to spite him, which is always what happens around her, anyway. He rests his fingers against her cheekbone, instead. “Sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” she says, and she’s right. He’s not, really. If she speaks, he can feel the circumference of her words before they even leave her mouth, and there’s something arresting about that. Not to mention the fact that it’s Darcy, and it would be strange if she didn’t talk all the way through it.

“No, you’re right,” he says, “I’m not,” and it’s more of a slip than he anticipates, but she smiles again, so it doesn’t particularly matter. Her mouth is wide, he thinks, and there’s lipstick there; there’s a bit of tackiness to his forefinger when he pulls away. She’s careful to keep her lips pressed together, but when he shifts to her cheekbones, to the way her hair is caught under the earpieces of her glasses, he can feel them part. Her glasses are sharp-edged and rectangular, slipping down her nose like she constantly rearranges them. Two piercings in her right ear, he thinks. Three in her left. “The scar?”

“Oh.” She swallows again when he traces the line of her eyebrow. “I mean, I just crashed my bike into a fence and, uh, cut myself. My grandmother wasn’t happy. Mostly because my mom didn’t even notice.”

He nods, once. “What color are your glasses?”

“Today?” When she blinks, he can feel her eyelashes feathering against his thumb. “Red. The frames, not the lenses. I switch around. I have like…four pairs. Contacts too, but I like the glasses better.”

“What about your eyes?”

“Um. They—a lot of people say they look blue, but they’re green, really, if you look close. And my hair is dark. Not black, but dark.”

He presses his fingertips into the skin beneath her cheekbones, to the soft hollow just under her jaw. She twitches when he does that, like he’s done something painful, but she doesn’t flinch. “Sorry.”

“No, like—like I said.” She swallows again, takes a shaky breath _again_ , and God, he has _rules_ , but they don’t really seem to matter when her voice sounds quite like that. “I’m ticklish.”

He lets his thumb catch against the curve of her lower lip, and leaves it there. When she lets out a breath, he can feel it. The moment hangs, gossamer and glimmering, and he thinks then that if he asked to kiss her, she would say yes. Then somewhere close, Foggy curses, and Matt pulls his hand away.

“So?” Her voice trembles, just slightly. “Did you find anything out that you didn’t know?”

 _You do wear lipstick,_ he thinks. But what he says is, “I was right, to think of you smiling.”

“I usually do,” Darcy says, but there’s a weight to the words like something’s been left behind.

Matt flees to the restroom once Foggy and Marci have settled themselves again, and presses his hands into his eyes.

.

.

.

He’s not sure if it’s better or worse that she doesn’t treat him differently, after Foggy’s birthday. Sometimes it feels like she might be watching him, but she never says a word.

(--he can still feel the texture of her voice against his jaw and he’s really getting sick of telling himself that he can’t do anything, because his rules never really seemed to matter to her anyway—)

He’ll wait, he tells himself. He’ll wait to ask her. He’s not sure he’s even brave enough to do it, but he gives himself the deadline. The end of Crim class, he thinks. The disintegration of whatever rules he’s crafted, whatever rules she’s shattered. Without Crim class, none of them quite matter anymore. He dreads it a little, but he’s also—he’s a selfish bastard, is Matt Murdock. He’s starting to wonder if losing her can have more than one meaning, if never having her in the first place can be a sort of loss.

(—he can’t get the way she’d swallowed out of his head, not when he set his thumb to her lips, and it makes him wonder, maybe, maybe—)

Then in the last week before the final, Walters pulls him aside and says, “Look, Rogers had to go on sabbatical, and I was saddled with his Constitutional Law class for next semester.” She doesn’t sound very pleased about it. “Most of these kids have already signed up for it, and it’d probably be good for them to see a familiar face as TA. There’s no problem with that on your end, right?”

(He’s never had the best luck.)

.

.

.

The first class of the new semester is hell, like he expects it’ll be. But it’s not hell because of the bar, which is…not expected.

Matt doesn’t quite remember most of the first week, but he definitely remembers the first session of Walters’ Constitutional Law class. He’s not the first one there—there are three 1Ls sitting towards the back, including Tucker, judging by the braying—but he’s early, so he settles his things on the desk near the door. Somehow he’s wound up with Darcy’s iPod again. She has a tendency to force it on him at random times. “Maybe use it as a barrier?” she says. “When the fan squad gets too irritating.” And yeah, it makes sense. Her taste in music is like reaching into a barrel of international flags and drawing out one at random; it’s always surprising to set it on shuffle. Which means it’s through a piano cover of “Mad World” that he hears Tucker say, “God, I hope that bitch isn’t in this class.”

Matt thumbs the music down.

“Who?” That’s a new voice, one he doesn’t recognize. Maybe one of the new students.

“Nah, there was just this girl in Crim last semester. Know-it-all, always picking fights. She was _exhausting_.” Tucker laughs. “But have to say, she had a fucking awesome rack. Like—” and he must do something with his hands, because the other two laugh and make appreciative noises. “It was insane.”

With great deliberation, Matt yanks the earbuds from his ears.

“She was really stuck-up, too,” Tucker adds, still laughing. “Thought she was too good for the rest of us. Someone said she spends a lot of time hanging around with 3Ls.”

“He’s just saying that because she shot him down _cold_ ,” says a third voice, and that’s Reeves, he knows that voice. “It was impressive.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised if she just gets all the answers on her back,” says Tucker, and he’s not entirely sure when he closed his hand into a fist, but he knows it’s trembling against his leg. “If the rumors are right, anyway, and if they’re wrong—”

“Excuse me,” he says. He’s proud of how steady his voice is, and also how _dangerous_ he sounds. He’s never quite sounded this dangerous before. “It’s Tucker, isn’t it?”

Tucker chokes off a word. “Yeah. Uh, yes.”

He keeps his clenched hands out of sight under the desk. “I’d wondered. Obviously it’s none of my business what you talk about in your free time. But if you _ever—_ ” and he can hear something of his dad in his voice, now, something dark and raw and furious, and he can’t blow his cover but he also refuses to sit here and listen to them spew their pus like rotting wounds “—talk about a female student, or a male student, or _anyone—_ ” _but especially her_ , he thinks, _especially her, when I know how torn she’s been about reporting you, when I know what you’ve been trying to do,_ “—like that in this class or in my range of hearing again, I can promise you that you will regret the consequences.”

He’s not sure, for a moment, if Tucker isn’t going to just laugh at him. Because it’s laughable, a blind man making threats when there’s nothing to back it up. But Tucker, when he speaks, has to clear his throat twice, as if he’s legitimately frightened. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay,” and Matt collects his things, because if he has to sit in here any longer—he doesn’t even know anymore.

“Tell Walters I should be around in a few minutes,” he says, and then he leaves. But as he shuts the door behind him, he hears, “Matt?” And it’s Darcy, and she must be wearing heels today because she’s clicking when she walks. “Are you okay?”

Matt can’t speak, not knowing what he’ll say. Darcy curses under her breath. “Come on,” she says, and she grabs his hand—his hand, not his wrist, and her fingers slide between his without conscious thought, almost like breathing—to tug him away into a nook that he’s passed a thousand times on the way to this classroom, out of sight of the main hallway, curved around to create a small, private space. “Matt,” she says again, and he’s so furious with himself, not just for Tucker but for taking on this class as a TA, for putting himself in this position _again_ , for how he wants to push her close up against the wall and find her mouth. He rages against himself for that. “What happened? You look like you want to kill someone.”

And the worst part is that she says it seriously, she says it without flinching, like it’s not a surprise that he might want to kill somebody. He opens his fist, and closes it up again. “It’s not—it’s nothing.”

She’s quiet. Darcy heaves a breath, and runs her hands up and down his arms, like she’s trying to put warmth back into him. He’s running cold, he realizes. Something inside him has gone hard and frigid as a glacier. “Okay. Um—I’ll let Walters know you’re going to be a few minutes late, okay? Just—do you want me to stay with you?”

 _Yes._ “No.” He shakes his head once. “No, you—it’s okay. Just, uh. Tucker’s already in the classroom.”

She pauses with her palm pressed into his shoulder. Then she smooths her hands down his arms one last time, and pulls away. “Okay.”

“Darcy,” he says, before she can vanish. “It’s—I know you don’t want to report him, and I respect that, but—but he shouldn’t just get away with it. What he was doing.”

He thinks she’ll walk away. Instead, she steps into him, and hides her face in the collar of his shirt. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t put her arms around him, just leans there, like she’s trying to resettle herself, like he’s a worrybead or a touchstone or something that grounds her. Her hair smells like honey shampoo, and there’s vanilla dabbed against the base of her neck, he thinks. Matt heaves a breath, and leans back into her, his hand resting on the small of her back, closing his eyes, breathing. Darcy doesn’t pull back for a full minute, and when she steps away, she does it with a ghosted kiss to his cheek, smoothing her thumb against the skin to wipe the lipstick away afterwards.

He’s seven minutes late, and Walters doesn’t ask why.

.

.

.

After the start of second semester (and thus the start of all the cramming that all the 3Ls have buried themselves in, the bar guiding his every thought most days, dread and terror and hope in one) she starts showing up at his apartment, because there are some days, especially on weekends, where he’s reviewing so much he doesn’t actually know what time it is, anymore. (He thinks she’s just done with how many times he’s slept through his alarm, and it’s cheaper for her to just drink his coffee anyway. Or that’s what he tells himself.) Some days Foggy comes with her, some days he doesn’t, and every time he delivers an excuse Matt’s not sure whether to thank him or hit him.

(“This is getting stupid, you know,” Foggy says one night when they’re studying. Darcy has gone for a coffee run, and won’t be back for twenty minutes. “You and her. And don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

Matt doesn’t lift his head. “It would be unethical.”

“See, you say that, but you didn’t have to accept the second class with Walters.” Foggy lets out a breath through his nose. “Sometimes I wonder if you really think that way, or if all you’re actually doing is trying to punish yourself.”

“I’m trying to be a good Catholic boy, that’s all.”

“Yeah, I know.” Foggy shuts up for a minute or two. “The worst thing about it, though, is that she’s being punished, too.”

He doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t have to. He’s made his point more than clear.)

It’s on a day when Foggy’s not there—“Sorry, have to meet Marci, the velociraptor needs feeding,” and if there’s one thing Matt would have preferred that Foggy not remember from that night it would have been the velociraptor metaphor, but there’s nothing he can do about it now—that Darcy clears her throat, and says, “Can I ask you something? And you totally don’t have to answer, by the way.”

Something in him sinks a little. Until right now, he hadn’t quite realized how absolutely he’d come to rely on Darcy’s utter blasé acceptance of his blindness. “Car accident.”

She makes a surprised chuffing noise. “Your dad died in a car accident?”

Matt blinks. Then he blinks again. “My dad?”

“What did you think I was going to ask?” she says, in a sort of voice that means _I already know, but I want you to say it anyway_. And Matt, despite being blind, has never run from a fight in his life. He turns his face in her direction, tipping his head.

“I thought you were going to ask about my eyes.”

“Ah.” She flips her pen between her fingers. “No. Unless you want to tell me, but like—that’s your business, you know? Besides, I always thought that asking differently-abled people how they _wound up the way they are—_ ” she’s doing air quotes, he just knows it “—was really gross. Because like—they’re people, not statistics. What does it matter whether you’re born deaf or you lose your hearing in an accident or through scarlet fever or whatever? You are the way you are, and you’re not just different pieces. The first thing that I remember when I think _Matt_ isn’t _that one guy I hang out with who’s blind,_ it’s _that snarky asshole who steals my coffee and wants to save the world, one person at a time_. There’s a difference.”

He genuinely has no clue what to say to this, which is probably a first.

“Anyway.” She doesn’t seem to have noticed his glitching. “I wanted to ask—I know your dad died, like—you told me that part, but it’s just…I don’t know. I realized the other day I didn’t even know how, and yeah, call it morbid curiosity, but I wanted to ask.”

“About my dad.”

“Yeah. Which, _again_ , doesn’t mean you have to answer me. I know it’s super nosy and everything.” Darcy rolls around on the couch, prodding him twice with her foot before settling her legs over his knees. Matt hooks his hands around her ankles without thinking about it, and only realizes he’s done it after he can’t let go. The bones feel very frail beneath the skin. “I just—Foggy said something offhand about everyone in Hell’s Kitchen knowing who your dad was, and I realized I didn’t actually know anything about him. But, you know, if you’d rather not talk about it—”

“No, it’s just—I don’t think anyone’s asked me about my dad since I was twelve.” And God, that’s—a depressingly long time ago. “That’s all.”

Darcy hums, and rocks her feet back and forth, twisting her ankles under his palms. “Do you mind me asking?”

He considers that, carefully. “No. Not really.”

She waits, and says nothing.

“I didn’t know what happened, at the time.” His voice cracks. Matt swallows, once. “He—he was a boxer. You’d probably find video of his matches, if you Google him. Jack Murdock. He never—he lost more often than he won. On purpose, actually. I found out later. He had a deal going with these bookies, or so they tell me. Dropped the ball to get more money. Especially after.”

He doesn’t have to say _after the accident_ or _after I lost my sight_ or even _after I was fucking stupid_ , because she seems to hear all three of them. Darcy leans forward, and touches his shoulder, lightly.

“They wanted him to throw a fight with this guy, Creel. And he didn’t. He won the fight, and he had—he made sure that they couldn’t take the winnings. And after—”

(— _he can smell blood even from this distance, and something sharper, like smoke_ —)

“They killed him,” Darcy says. There’s absolutely no inflection to her voice. She shifts against the couch. “The bookies.”

“There was never any proof.” (—the edge to Bernie’s voice when he’d said _Mattie, you shouldn’t come around here anymore_ , and the twang of his dad’s old friends, _go home, kid, you don’t want to end up like your dad,_ and the way they’d _laughed_ , harsh and dirty and dangerous—) “It—it had to have been them, but there was no proof. There was never—” He stops. “No one was ever arrested.”

Darcy tucks her legs back up underneath her again, and moves until she’s sitting next to him, shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip.  

“I don’t—they didn’t tell me what had been done to him until I was sixteen. And even then I know they had to have left things out, because I can remember—” Matt stops. “I remember one of the cops said something like _it’s not something a kid should see_. Before they realized.”

She takes one of his hands in both of hers, and cups it, just for a moment. When he doesn’t pull away, she turns it palm up, and starts messing with his fingers, lifting them up and down, like she’s checking to see if they work properly. It should be invasive—it’s intimate, and what’s worse, it’s intimate in a way that he absolutely should not want to encourage—but it’s not even close to that moment in the bar, his thumb pressed into her lower lip. Intimacy is relative. He wants to curl his fingers into hers and hold on. “Were you waiting for him to come out of the ring?”

“No, I was at home. I just—he hadn’t come home yet. And I wanted to look.” And he’d heard sirens. “I knew the neighborhood. And usually when he won, he came home early, he—he always came home early if he won. If he lost, he stayed out later. He never stayed away that long after he won.”

She turns his hand palm down again, swipes her thumbs over his knuckles. It’s Foggy’s birthday all over again, her tracing patterns into his skin that he can’t predict. “What about your mom?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember her. My dad—he never said her name, really. She left when I was maybe six months old.”

Her fingers still, just for a moment. “Sounds like me, a little,” she says. “My mom—she had me in high school. My dad doesn’t even know I exist. Mom—she didn’t tell him she was pregnant. Or like—he thought she had an abortion, when she didn’t. Something like that. Nobody ever told me, really. He lives in Guatemala, I think. Sometimes, after my grandma died, and things were really bad, I used to wish he’d figure it out and come and take me away. But of course he didn’t. He probably has a family of his own and everything. Even if he did know about me, I couldn’t fit into that.”

Matt closes his fingers around hers, reflexively. Then he lets go, or starts to. Darcy makes a tiny, protesting sound, and holds on. It’s foreign and familiar, touching her hand. He’s not sure why they don’t do this more often, or why they’re doing it now, but he can’t see himself stopping anytime soon.

Somewhere on his floor, a door opens, and then slams again. His neighbor curses loudly in Portuguese.

“What happened?” she says, her voice almost gone. “After.”

“My dad—there aren’t any other Murdocks that I know of. And my mom’s family was all dead, so the state put me into St. Agnes. A—it’s kind of like a foster home, or a boarding school. Or both, really. Run by the nuns there. I stayed until I started at Columbia.”

Her nails bite into his hand, just for a second. “How old were you?”

His throat hurts. “Ten,” he says. “I was ten.”

“So, the nuns brought about the Catholicism,” she says, and he laughs once in spite of himself. It’s too sharp, almost cutting.

“In a way, yeah. Nuns and funerals.”

Darcy turns her head to press her cheek into his shoulder. When she lets out a breath, he can feel it tickling against the skin just beside the collar of his shirt. “What was he like? Your dad.”

For a long time, he can’t quite find the words. “He was—I wonder, sometimes, if—if me being that young when he died doesn’t affect how I remember him. I was ten, and—and he was the only family I had. So I think I remember too many of the good things, not enough of the bad.”

“So what do you remember? The good and the bad.” She pauses. “If you want to tell me, I mean.”

Matt turns, just enough that she slips into the curve of him, and that fits. It’s scary, how well that fits. “Stubborn,” he says, and he’s not quite sure if he’s smiling, or frowning, or both. “Stubborn son of a bitch. Said the weirdest things sometimes. He used—he always said I was smarter than both of us put together, which made no sense, but I could tell he believed it. He said it even more after I finished physio. And I always used to tell him it wasn’t true, but he just wouldn’t let it go.”

She smiles against the fabric of his shirt, and pinches his thumb. “Sounds like you take after him a little bit. Jackass.”

“Hm, maybe.” She’s wearing rings on her fingers. Two on her index, one on her middle, one on the pinkie. Matt traces his thumb over them, one at a time, feeling out the sharp edges. “People used to say that we were opposites, him and me. Smart kid, idiot father. I think he really believed it, even though I never did. Yeah, I was—I was more widely read than he was, especially after I learned braille, but he knew more about people. He could always make people like him. And even when he hit the mat, he just—he kept going. He’s probably the only reason why I managed as well as I did, after the accident.”

He leaves the word dangling, waiting, but she doesn’t bite. Darcy uses her free hand to hook her hair back out of her face. “What else do you remember?”

He should stop here, he thinks. Draw away. But he words bubble up and out of him, tying knots all through his guts. “He wanted me to be—he wanted me to be better. I didn’t pick fights, not really, but it—they always made me angry. Bullies.”

Darcy hums, deep and coiling and pleased, and even though her hair is tickling against his jaw and she’s swallowing him in the feel and sound of her, that noise—Jesus, the noise buries itself inside every inch of him, and all he wants to do is crawl inside her head and find a way to make her repeat it. “That hasn’t changed, so far as I can tell.”

He huffs through his nose, half a laugh. “One time I took a swing at this jackass eighth-grader who lived a few places up the road. He used to come up behind one of the girls in my class—she had a lot of hair, big afro—and just yank on it for no reason. Gave her a lot of shit. So I just—I told him to stop, and when he didn’t, I punched him. And he went down, and I remember—I went right to my dad to tell him, and God, the look on his face. I thought he was going to hit me. He told me he didn’t want me to fight like that, not ever again. I thought he was going to shake my teeth out of my skull.”

She strokes her thumb over his knuckles again.

“I was so confused,” Matt says, and he hates how his voice crackles, but Darcy doesn’t even flinch. He feels like there should be some kind of echo, like they’re standing alone in a canyon. Or in an empty tomb. “He was my dad, and he—he fought. Every day he’d come home, and I’d have to stitch him back together, because he fought so damn hard it broke him to pieces. He said that fighting, especially fighting the way he did, it never put him anywhere. He was constantly spinning his wheels. He thought he was worthless, that he’d—that he’d never done anything good in his life. And he wanted me to be better than that.” 

Darcy doesn’t say anything for a long time. Then she passes his hand over, from her right to her left, and settles her free fingers against the back of his neck.

“My grandmother,” Matt says, “his mom, she used to say, _Murdock boys got the devil in ‘em._ And he made it a joke, you know, my dad, especially after she died. _Get home on time or the devil will come after you._ But sometimes—sometimes, when he was fighting, he’d get laid out. And when he’d get back up again you could see—it was like something in him would just vanish, some—some barrier, or—or sense of restraint. Like a part of him went dead. And the other guy, he’d see it before anyone else, and he’d try to get away, but—but my dad, he’d just walk forward. Just—casual. Not even trying to defend himself. And—and he’d rip them apart.” He licks his lips, presses them together. “Sometimes—sometimes I wonder if he tried so hard to give me a chance outside of what he did because—because he could see that same thing. In me. Because when I think about what he did to people—I never really understood it, then. But now, I think—I think that if I could, I’d want to.”

It all comes out of him like infection, like a scab being ripped off with duct tape. He thinks she might stop, when he’s done, thinks she might pull away, but she doesn’t even twitch. Her breathing stays steady as she lifts her head, and he can tell, just from how still she is, how she holds herself, that she’s watching him. Then she rests one hand to his scalp, and bends him down to press her lips to his forehead. Matt can’t quite get a full breath anymore.

“If your dad was anything like you say he was,” she says, and her voice—God, her voice sounds like how it feels to touch sunlight, like how it would be to catch a falling star, “if he was anything like you at all, then he was a good man, Matt, and he’d be proud of you. No matter what you did, or what you do, or what you want to do. He’d be so, so proud of you. I know he would.”

It’s not what she’s supposed to say, and it’s not supposed to hurt. But she says it, and it does, the kind of pain you get when something cancerous is cut out of you, the kind of pain that’s clean. Matt closes his eyes, and when Darcy sets her cheek to his shoulder again, he turns and puts his mouth to her hair. It’s too intimate, he thinks. It’s far too intimate. But he’s already in love with her, so it’s not like any of his old rules matter anymore.

.

.

.

He keeps stealing her coffee. It’s stupid, but he does it, because the times when he and Foggy can actually meet up with her without getting lost in legal insanity are becoming rarer and rarer, because it makes her laugh, because it’s habit. One day, though, when he hands hers back to her, she takes his. Both the cups are gone before he can blink, and she makes a noise that’s caught between disgust and amusement.

“I can’t believe you don’t add cream to it, even,” she says, when she hands it back. “There’s no shame in cream and sugar, Murdock.”

He blinks once, twice. “You—”

“Seriously,” says Darcy, and laughs. “Cream. Sugar. Think about it.”

There’s lipstick on the rim when he drinks from the cup later, chalky, and he might be wrong, but he could swear—

.

.

.

He’s not even sure how it happens, but suddenly (and it _is_ sudden, the difference of a moment, of a breath) the classroom goes from content to _violent_ , and Darcy’s right in the middle of it.

He doesn’t even know what started it. He thinks it was Tucker. (He _knows_ it was Tucker. But there’s no proof, not without hearsay, so he just accepts that it was, and refuses to discuss it with anyone.) He doesn’t hear what Tucker says, can’t make it out (there’s only his tone, self-satisfied, _excited,_ waiting for the reaction), but he _definitely_ hears Darcy. “You don’t know what the _fuck_ you’re talking about.”

“Sure I do,” Tucker says, and there’s murmuring around them as Matt gets out of his chair, as he reaches for his cane. “I know that you’re a fucking stalker, and a lying bitch in the bargain—”

“Shut _up_.” He’s _never_ heard her sound like this, like she wants to reach out and scrape with her nails until she finds bone. “It’s _none_ of your fucking business, Tucker. Stay out of my life.”

“I feel like it’s everyone’s business, you being a fucking _stalker_.”

“You have no idea,” she says. “You have _no idea_ about _any_ of that and if you don’t _shut up—_ ”

“ _Excuse me_ ,” says Walters from the door, and in the same moment, Matt seizes Darcy’s arm. The muscles in her elbow are shaking, they’re so tense. Her hands are curled like claws. “What the _hell_ is going on here?”

“Let me _go_ , Matt.” She yanks at him. “You don’t—he doesn’t—you don’t _know—_ ”

“Darcy. _Darcy_.” She doesn’t seem to hear him. He grabs her shoulder, spins her around. “Darcy, stop. _Stop_.”

She makes a noise like tearing metal. “You don’t fucking know what he _said._ ”

“And you’re better than this.” She’s shaking, and that scares him more than anything. She’s _shaking_ with the force of her rage. “You’re better than this.”

“It was all a _lie_ , all of it was a lie, they don’t—”

“Stop.” He can’t do what he wants to do. He doesn’t even _know_ what he wants to do, except touch her. She’ll scratch him if he does, but he wants to anyway. “Stop.”

Darcy pants, and closes her hand hard around his, just for a moment. Then she wrenches away, and stalks out the door. He can hear people scrambling to get out of her way. The door slams behind her.

“What,” says Tucker, “the _fuck_ is her problem?”

“You,” says Walters. “Shut your mouth and come with me. The rest of you, form discussion groups about the sample case. Matt, go after her, please.”

Matt nods. He’s already turning when Walters catches his arm. “Matthew,” she says, and her voice is—odd. Considering. “I’ve had you in my classes since you were a 1L. I know you’re not the type to cross boundaries without reason.”

He stops. Licks his lips. “Professor?”

“Make a choice, Mr. Murdock,” she says, and lets him go. “You’re not quite as subtle as you think you are, and I don’t particularly enjoy being used as an excuse.”

She’s gone before he can think of a response. Matt collects his cane, and taps after Darcy, because there’s really only one place she could go after an altercation like that.

There’s a small strip of grass near the law school in Columbia, complete with a single bench that’s usually really popular in the summer season. It’s February, though, which means nobody wants to be out here, especially with the ice. Darcy’s perched on the end of the bench. She didn’t bring a coat out with her, he thinks. He’s not sure she cares. “You’re not cold.”

“My rage keeps me warm,” Darcy says flatly. “You didn’t have to stop me.”

“Yes, I did.” He drops down onto the other end of the bench. “What the hell happened?”

“None of your business.”

And that stings, though he won’t admit it. “Darcy.”

“Don’t—don’t _Darcy_ me. That’s not fair. You can’t—don’t do that.”

“I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say.”

“How about _Tucker’s a fucking asshole and we should kill him?_ Because that’s basically the only thing I want to hear right now.”

“I don’t know how good of an accomplice I’ll be. I could hold duct tape, maybe.”

Darcy doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t know what else to say, so for a long time, they sit in silence.

 “I never told you what happened in Culver,” she says, and her voice is wet. “Did I?”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” he says. “It’s your business, not mine, and not theirs.”

Darcy chokes on a laugh. She still hasn’t touched him.

“See, that’s funny, because _I_ thought that, but apparently—apparently people won’t let things go.” She draws a breath in, and holds it. “You know, there was—there are frats and sororities at Culver, same as there are here. And, um, there was this one frat, everyone—all the female-identifying students, we all knew it was bad news. Most of the boys could be okay, if—if you caught them on their own, and stuff, but the hazing was really bad, and they, um. They liked to throw really big parties. And one of them would always bring drugs.”

Matt curls his hands around his cane. “What kind of drugs?”

“I mean, the typical stuff. Ecstasy, weed. Sometimes LSD.” She hiccups twice, and hands him her glasses. There are teardrops on the lenses. When she speaks again, she’s muffled, like she’s wiping her face. “But—but the bigger parties, they were always dangerous, because girls would get raped. I never—I like parties, sure, but I’m not stupid, I’d heard about them before I even enrolled at Culver because I grew up in Georgia, heard things from other Culver kids. But—but freshman year, my roommate, she was from Kansas. Like, actually, her name was Dorothy and she was from Kansas, and she was—she was the most innocent person. She talked me into going with her one night, and I said I would, but—but that we had to keep an eye on each other. We couldn’t just—couldn’t just wander off.”

Something cracks against the back of his neck, and trickles down his spine like ice.

“Nothing happened to me,” she says. She’s very quiet, now. “I was—I didn’t drink anything, really, didn’t talk to any of the boys from the frat. I found some people we shared classes with, stuck with them. And Dorothy did too, for the most part, but—but towards the end, she went to talk to some of the other girls on the school lacrosse team, and I thought—I thought she’d be _okay_ with them. So I went to the bathroom, and when I came back out, I couldn’t find her anywhere. She didn’t pick up her phone. And, you know, I was kind of freaked out, but I thought—I thought she’d gone back to the dorm.”

She takes her glasses back from him, fixes them on her face.

“I was up all night.” Her voice cracks. “She didn’t—she didn’t get back until nearly noon the next day. And—and I could tell, even without her saying anything, that—that someone had done something to her. She couldn’t—she was a virgin, before, and she couldn’t remember anything, they’d drugged her drinks or _something_ , and she was so, so embarrassed. She made me promise not to tell anyone, and I know—I know I should have told somebody, but, you know, there was no proof. She couldn’t remember their faces, nobody saw anything, and—and she didn’t want me to. She begged me not to. And I didn’t tell anyone. I never—I never said anything.

“But junior year,” she says, and she’s speaking faster now, like she’s trying to force it all out, “junior year, Dorothy and I, we were—we were sitting in the library or something and one of these guys from the frat came up to us to say hi, he was in one of my classes, and I could see—I could see it, in her face, that this was one of them. I don’t know what she remembered, or if it was just—his voice, or something, or how he moved, but she remembered _something_. And I could see her starting to panic. I didn’t—I didn’t say that he’d attacked her, or anything, I didn’t have proof, but I told him—I told him if he ever came near us again, I would hurt him. And he wouldn’t—he wouldn’t even see it coming.”

She stops again, screeching to a halt.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“I want to. I want—” There’s a pause. “I need to say this, okay? I need—I need to say this.”

This time she finds his hand, first, squeezing tight into his, and Matt doesn’t let go. “Okay.”

“I think—I think he was scared.” She’s fixating on his fingers again, drawing patterns against his tendons with her forefinger. “I think I scared him. Because—because the same week this rumor started going around that—that I was stalking him. That I was crazy. And I tried to tell people he was lying, but he was popular, you know? And—and the administration were actually considering _investigating_ me, like—my advisor didn’t believe the rumors but she couldn’t stop them, and then—and then I took the internship with Jane, and when I came back he’d graduated, but no one would talk to me. And—and Dorothy had transferred to another school, before I left. She couldn’t handle it anymore.”   

She’s shaking. Matt doesn’t think. He sets his cane aside and he hooks an arm around her, and Darcy doesn’t hesitate when she buries herself into him, hiding her face, shoulders trembling. She’s dry-eyed.

“And I still don’t know that I did anything wrong, which is the worst part.” She swallows a few times, convulsively. “I don’t—I don’t think I did anything wrong, but it all blew up in my face, and I wonder if I—if I’d insisted, if I’d made her report it, maybe it would have gone differently, but I just— _why_ would Tucker bring it up? Why would he even look for it? It doesn’t matter to him, it doesn’t _matter_ anymore, but he brought it up anyway and I just—”

“He’s a bastard, that’s all.” He tries very, very hard not to sound how he feels, because what he feels is vicious. He wants to find Tucker and break him into shards. He wants to go to Culver and _ruin_ it, rip it into pieces. “He’s just—he’s a bastard, and it doesn’t matter.”

“But it _does_ matter.” She doesn’t push away from him. If anything, she crushes herself up smaller, hiding away. “I should have _done something,_ Matt, back when doing something would change things. But I didn’t do _anything_ , and then I fucked it all up, and I should have been _better,_ I should have made better choices, but I’m just—really terrible at good choices, and I wrecked her life, and he managed to get away clean, and I’m—”

“Darcy.” His hand’s against the back of her neck, and he can’t remember when it wound up there. “No. _No_ , all right? No. You—you tried to be a good friend. You’re not—you’re not terrible, not like you think.”

“But they _believed him_ ,” she says, and she’s a whirl all at once, digging her fingernails into his shoulders like she’s trying to drag something out. “They _believed_ him when he said what he did, they believed I was crazy, and—and somehow he—someone found out about my mom, and what she’s like, and how—how she’s depressed, and they started using that as proof, they _used my mother’s illness_ like it was—like it was a fucking _lightshow_ , and I don’t—”

“No.” He can feel tears against his palms. Matt bends close into her, and somehow they’re close enough that her breath catches on his, and the skin of her temple is smooth against his forehead, and he keeps his eyes closed, but he can imagine her, just for a moment, claws unsheathed, teeth bared, raging. “No.”

“But—”

“No.” She closes her eyes, her lashes tickling against his thumb. “No, Darcy. No.”

“You don’t—”

“ _No_.” How can she not see this? “No, you’re not—you did what you could. And you’re not—what happened wasn’t your fault.”

“But it—”

“No.” Darcy lets out another ragged breath, and blinks. “No. You’re—you’re better than you think you are. You’re _so much better_ than you seem to think you are, and you are _not_ the reason that happened. Everything—everything that went on at Culver, that wasn’t you. That was them. And that—that doesn’t change any of this, here. Do you understand?”

She doesn’t say anything. She just nods. He doesn’t know why she can’t believe it, or why she’s never known it, but she _is_. She’s truth and passion and _com_ passion, wrath and revenge and a thousand other things. She’s astoundingly, beautifully imperfect, and he wants her, and _god_ , he doesn’t want to lose her. He can’t keep her, but he doesn’t want to lose her, either, and the split is ripping away at him like seam cutters.

“I want to hurt him,” she says. “Not just—not just Tucker. I want to hurt that bastard at Culver.”

He nods into her hair, not trusting his own voice.

“I should tell Professor Walters I’m sorry.” There’s a damp spot against his neck where she’s hidden her face. “I shouldn’t—that wasn’t fair to her, doing that in class.”

“Tucker started it.”

“Still.” She gulps again. “And—and I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’m sorry I said—”

“You don’t have to apologize.” Her hair’s thicker than he’d thought it might be, tangling between his fingers. “You don’t have to apologize for any of that, all right? Just—don’t.”

“But—”

“It’s okay.” And when he says it, she starts trembling all over again, trying so hard not to cry. “It’s okay, Darcy, all right? Don’t—you shouldn’t worry about me.”

She’s quiet, but in a shy way, this time. Then she says, “But I worry about the people I care about, you can’t tell me—you can’t tell me not to do that.”

God, that stings. It stings in the most wonderfully aching way. Matt strokes his hands through her hair, sets his mouth hard to her forehead. “Then I’ll worry about you. But you can worry about me later. Okay?”

She doesn’t say anything else, really. But the silence, in this moment, matters more.

.

.

.

He’s not imagining the way she’s dancing around him. He knows he’s not.

The day after everything happens with Tucker, he finds another 3L to replace him as the TA for the Constitutional Law class. Walters isn’t particularly surprised. “I’m honestly wondering why you decided to join in the first place,” is all she says when he comes to apologize. “Considering everything.” And that makes him wonder exactly how obvious he’s been, even in class, if Jen Walters—who is famed for not seeing anything that’s not buried in a case book—has noticed something he’s been trying so desperately to hide.

(“At least she didn’t say _hurt my advisee and die_ ,” Foggy tells him later, and he shoves Foggy hard enough that Foggy actually loses his balance and nearly falls into a slush pile. Matt refuses to feel guilty for that.)

Darcy doesn’t really say anything about the changeover. Actually, she doesn’t even _ask_. And at first that’s understandable, because she’s withdrawn into herself, a little, trying to rebuild whatever steadiness she’d found in the city. She drags him out to Coney Island one day even though everything’s closed. It doesn’t seem to matter, since she enjoys it just as much as if all the rides were working. (“Empty fairgrounds? Hashtag aesthetic. Pass me the Coke can, like two inches from your left—yeah, there. I want to see how far I can throw it and if I can, possibly, win an imaginary bunny for you.”) She doesn’t ask, and he doesn’t really offer an explanation, because he’s known all along that it was never really the TA position that kept him from speaking, anyway.

Still, she’s _dancing_ , and it’s something new. There’s a different kind of mood to her touches, some days, like she’s trying to get a reaction out of him. Or she’s touching him just for the sake of touch. She’ll leave her hand close to his on a countertop, her pinky brushing against the edge of his palm. Or she’ll sit close enough that her knee keeps colliding with his under the table. He thinks it might be a test, though of what, he’s not sure. Boundaries, maybe. He’s never sure what she’s doing, and that’s part of why she’s still so fascinating. But she’s also being highly _distracting,_ which is—dangerous. In a lot of ways.

Spring break is a fever of studying and unconsciousness, so he’s not even sure what day it is when he snaps awake to someone doing the equivalent of shooting a pistol into his door over and over again. Matt’s on the couch (because apparently he’d fallen asleep so abruptly that he hadn’t even managed to peel himself off into bed) so he rolls onto the floor and says something approximating “be right there” in a language close to English, just so the noise stops.

He only realizes he’s forgotten a shirt when he opens the door, still half-asleep. “I swear to god, Foggy, I said no.”

“Uh.” Darcy clears her throat, loudly. “No, it’s me.”

Shit. “What time is it?”

“Nearly two. It took me a while to get a cab over here that wasn’t obnoxious.” There’s an awkward shuffling sound. “Sorry. Just—yeah. Sorry.”

“I was supposed to meet you an hour ago,” he says, belatedly, and he can almost hear her wincing.

“You, uh. Your braille reader left you a present. On your face.”

There are dents in his cheek. “God. Just—come in, I’ll be right back.”

“Matt, seriously, it’s okay, you were asleep—”

He leaves the door open pointedly, and stalks off to his bedroom to at least grab a shirt. There’s not much he can do for the dents, or the way he hasn’t shaved, but considering he usually has fights with the razor and doesn’t like using it anyway, she’s probably seen worse. The front door closes again, quietly, and he hears her set her bag on the kitchen counter. “Honestly, it’s okay. I was just, you know, worried. I called but you didn’t pick up, so.”

He doesn’t even remember hearing the phone ring. “I must have slept through it.”

“I’m concerned,” Darcy says in a loud voice. “Does the bar make every 3L go crazy?”

“I think that’s one of its primary requirements.” He finds a shirt, yanks it over his head. The collar catches on his hair, but he’s already halfway back out into the living room, so he just deals with it. (He’s not imagining the way her breathing stutters, he knows he isn’t.) “But I told you I’d go over Constitutional Law with you, and I will.”

“You should really probably sleep.”

“Darcy.”

“Matt.”

“It’s okay.”

“You fell asleep on your braille reader. I feel like that’s not okay.”

“ _Lapushka_ ,” he says, and he’s not entirely sure if it’s a gasp he hears, or a hiss. “It’s really okay.”

Darcy’s silent for a long time. Then she says, “I didn’t think you remembered.”

“I have to make sure you’re not a pod person somehow.”

She’s silent, and it _echoes_. It’s never good when her silence echoes.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She glitches out, just for a moment. “I mean—it’s something. But it’s—yeah. I want—one second.”

“…okay?”

“So I’m just going to say something.” She’s pacing, he can hear it in the way the floor creaks. “And—and if I’m wrong, then whatever, we can forget it or—do whatever you want to do, or whatever is comfortable, or—whatever. But I need to say it because I am _pretty sure,_ like ninety-eight-point-five percent sure, that I’m _not_ wrong, and I really don’t want to just pretend it’s not happening anymore because that hurts, a lot more than I thought it would, okay, and I just—”

“Darcy—”

“No, you shut up, it’s my turn to monologue.”

Matt opens his mouth, and closes it again. He leans against the back of his couch, and waits. Something is sticking in the base of his throat, like he’s swallowed wrong.

“So there’s this guy in my class.” He hears something clicking, and realizes she must be fidgeting with one of her bracelets. “And, you know, he’s kind of quiet, he doesn’t talk much outside of when people ask him questions, but he seems nice. And—and a few weeks in I realize he’s always laughing when I talk to myself.”

He freezes.

“Which is weird, right?” She’s not unsettled, not anymore. Now she’s just—she’s steel. “Because usually I say the stupidest shit, but I don’t think he’s laughing at me because I’m being an idiot. He’s laughing because he thinks I’m funny. And that’s kind of cool, because he’s—he’s attractive and he knows it but he’s not stuck-up about it, and like I said, he seems nice. So I start—kind of keeping track of him, a little bit. Think about going to his office hours, maybe, but—but chicken out, because like, yeah, I can be funny if you don’t think too hard about it, but he probably doesn’t even want to talk to me, don’t be dumb, Darcy.”

She stops, and waits, as if she’s prepping for an interruption. Matt doesn’t say a word.

“And somehow—I’m still not sure if it was really an accident, to be honest—I get dragged to a bar with him and his best friend, and they’re just—good people. And they both seem to mean it, when they say they want me tagging along. And it’s _nice._ ” Her voice cracks, a little. “I know I keep saying that, but it is, it’s really, really nice, because they’re both really smart, and they’re dedicated, and they like the same things I like, and even if they don’t they don’t mind me talking forever about them. And that guy, the first guy, the quiet one—he’s focused, and passionate, and he really, genuinely wants to help people, and he’s like me, sometimes, because he’s so _angry_ when the system falls short, or when it fucks people over, and Jesus, it’s so dumb, because I know there’s absolutely _no way_ he’d ever be interested in someone like me, but I kind of get a crush on him in like the first five minutes anyway, because what else am I supposed to do when there’s someone like—when he’s brilliant and funny and he _cares_ , so much, how am I not supposed to fall for that?”

He can’t quite breathe.

“And I’m totally prepared to not say anything, ever, because like I said, it’s not like—it’s not like someone like him would ever be interested in someone like me. But—” and she takes a breath, and he hears the floor creak as she moves closer “—but sometimes there are moments—and I seriously thought I was imagining them at first because you have no idea how good I am at that, seriously—there are moments when I think, maybe, that there could be something there, but he’s—he’s really good at hiding things when he wants to, so I convince myself that I’m making it up. The first time, and the second, and the third, yeah, I think—I think I’m just pretending. But then he starts doing this _thing—_ ” and she steps closer, into his space, and the air seems to be shaking “—where it really, really seems like he’s flirting with me. He steals my coffee, and he still laughs at my jokes, and he acts like—like I’m important. Not just in general, but—but to him, specifically. He makes me feel like—like I’m important. And sometimes, I think he’s about to kiss me, but he always pulls back. And—and it’s getting harder for me to act like I’m just making it up, because other people see it too, and halfway through convincing myself that I’m wrong, that we’re _all_ wrong, I realize that that same guy, the quiet one who laughs when I say dumb shit? I’ve told him things that I’ve never, ever told anyone, about me, and—and about my family, and how I think, and he’s told _me_ things that I don’t think he’s ever told anyone else—”

It’s not a question, but he still says, “I didn’t. Not—I haven’t.”

She lets out a shaky breath. “Okay.” He thinks he might hear her swallow. “And—and when I think that, I finally figure it out, you know, that I don’t—I don’t just have a crush on him anymore.”

It feels as though she’s just kicked him in the stomach, the weight and power of that, the _hope_ that crashes into him. Matt clenches his hands tight into the back of the couch, and swallows.

“I _don’t_ ,” she says again, fiercely, like he thinks she’s going to question her. “And it’s kind of unfair, because—because I’m not good at unrequited anything, okay? I’m not good at _requited_ anything, but—but unrequited is harder, because I don’t know—I don’t know if I’m crazy or not, for thinking that there might be something there. Even though I’m _sure_ there is, now, even if it’s not—the same as what I’m feeling. But he never says anything, he never—he never does _anything about it_ even when there are times when I _know_ he wants to, and I can’t understand why.”

“Darcy—”

“No, I’m not done.” She’s breathing hard, like she’s running. “And then I get this—this really terrible thought, you know, because he _could_ say something. Especially over break, he _could_ say something. But he doesn’t. And I think, maybe, at first, that he’s ashamed of it, but if he is, then he doesn’t—he doesn’t _act_ like it, so that doesn’t make sense. And then when I—and then he says something, and it sticks in my head. That—that I’m much better than I think I am. And at first that’s really—that helps. But then it makes me think— _what if he thinks I’m too good for him_? Or, and this—this is kind of worse, actually, somehow, because he’s wrong, but—but _what if he thinks he’s not good enough for me_?”

And that’s a lance right to the heart, which he should be getting used to, around her. She’s always had a knack for pinning people to a corkboard, defining them before they can even define themselves. “Darcy,” he says again, but then she’s hit him in the shoulder, once, hard, not even a punch, just a smack that stings enough to shut him up.

“And he’s _wrong_ ,” she snaps, and she sounds just the same way she does when she’s arguing someone to a standstill, when she has the bit between her teeth and isn’t going to let go, when she says _this is wrong and why can’t someone fix it_ and he loves her in a way that he can’t even explain. “He’s _wrong_. Because—because no matter what he thinks of himself, no matter what’s—what’s happened to him, he’s _not_ worthless. And I’m _not_ too good for him. And—and he’s lying to himself, and I’d really, really like him to stop. Because even if—even if I’m scared, because I’m not good at—at feelings or at relationships or at whatever, I think that it’d be worse to just—pretend it’s not happening, to pretend that it doesn’t—that it doesn’t exist. I don’t _want_ to pretend that. I just—” Her voice breaks. “I just want to—to tell him the truth, about all of it. I want to know I’m not—that I’m not making it up. And that this is—that this is something that could _happen._ If we let it. Him and me.” She licks her lips. “Because I really—I really want it to, if he does. And I don’t think it’s fair that he—that he seems to have decided what’s good enough for me, and what’s not. Because _I’m_ the one who decides that. Just me. And—and even if he thinks he’s not worth any of it, I—I can’t see how he’s not.”

 _You’re punishing her, too_ , Foggy says in his head, and god, he’s stupid, he’s _such_ an idiot, but he still can’t speak, can’t find the words.

“Unless I’m wrong,” she says, and she doesn’t back down. “But I don’t think I am.”

He could say a lot of things, then. He could say _yes_ , and break her heart. He could say _I can’t, please_ , and she would back off, he _knows_ she would, and she would act like it never happened just like she promised at the start. _I don’t know what you want from me_. Or _I don’t know that we can do this_. There are a hundred thousand things he could say, but when he finally works himself up to speech, all he can manage is, “No.”

There’s a moment of silence. Then she’s too close, and there’s her fingertips, resting just barely against his shirt, and her face is tipping up to his. “No?” she says, and he can’t even begin to define what she sounds like now, in this moment, when she can feel the way he’s breathing, and how his heart is beating, when she’s seen parts of him that should frighten her and only seem to make her think, when she can say _how am I not supposed to fall for that_ and _mean_ it.

 _I was right, to think of you smiling_ , he’d said, and there’d been that slight hesitation, like there was something she’d left unspoken, in _I usually do_. And he thinks, maybe, that the unspoken piece, the silent clause, might have been _if I’m around you._

“No,” he says again. “No, you’re not—you’re not wrong.”

Her fingers curl tighter into his shirt. She doesn’t move. She doesn’t even seem to breathe. “Okay.” She’s honey and vanilla and a warm hand over his heart. “Okay, then—if I’m not wrong, what, um. What do you want to do?”

Matt doesn’t remember moving. It’s instinctive, really. Or more than instinctive, something stronger. It doesn’t matter. One second he’s listening to her breathe, and the next, she’s pressed close into him, closer, and her mouth’s opening into his. She tastes like lipstick and toothpaste and coffee, salt and sugar at once, her nails are biting into the skin at the base of his neck and the back of the couch is jamming into his hips but he doesn’t care, not now, not when she’s humming into him, buzzing against his lips. “Matt,” she says, and her nails bite again, edging up into his hair. “Jesus Christ, I thought I was going crazy—”

She’s wearing a hooded sweatshirt and high heels—she has to be wearing heels, she’s taller than usual, and she’s balanced on her toes even as she’s pushing into him—and the combination is terrifyingly attractive, for some obscure reason he doesn’t want to look too deeply into. “I’m sorry.” He says it against her mouth, against the skin of her cheek. “I didn’t mean—I _never_ wanted to make you feel like that, not ever, I didn’t—”

“You didn’t _think_ ,” Darcy snaps, but she snaps it against his jaw, which is actually phenomenal. “You didn’t _think_ , and—and if this gets to be a regular thing with you then I swear to god I am going to _hurt you_ , Matthew Murdock—”

“God, I love you,” he says, and it’s so stupid because he’d never meant to say that, but it slips from him before he even thinks it through, and she jolts like he’s just plugged her into lightning. Then she digs into him with her fingernails and sets her mouth to his, again and again, and kissing her is an argument all on its own, because she _never_ likes losing, and he’s not much better—he’s worse, actually, he’s always going to be worse—and so there’s no real way to tell who’s winning or not. She makes this tiny clipped noise in the back of her throat when he catches her lower lip between his, though, and he’s going to make her make that sound again. He’s going to make her make that sound for _weeks._

“You’re not allowed to say that.” Darcy kisses him again, twice, four times, six. “You’re not allowed to _say_ that when I’m frustrated with you.”

“I didn’t think. Or—I thought too much, but I didn’t think, just— _god_.” He finds her shoulders, touches his thumb to the pulse in her throat, cups his hand around the back of her neck. “Don’t ever think that again. Don’t you _ever_ think you’re not good enough for me.”

“And don’t you think you’re not good enough for me,” she snaps, “jackass,” but she slips her hands up under his shirt as she says it, swiping her thumbs into the lines between his ribs, and the touch is blazing starshine. “Don’t think that. Don’t _ever._ Promise me.”

“Not good at that.” He sets his mouth to that spot just beneath her jaw, the spot she said was ticklish, and judging from the way she twitches, she was lying her ass off. _Sensitive_ , he thinks. _Not ticklish._ “I can try, though.”

“All I want,” she says, breathless. “That’s—well, not all I want, but trying is—trying is definitely way up there, that I can tell you.”

And he’s laughing when he kisses her again, because she tastes like coffee and fire and a smile that he’s been wanting to study since the start, and he thinks, _Please, God, please don’t let me fuck this up._

“I love you,” she says, and she says it into his mouth, into his skin. He’s not sure she hasn’t melded it into his bones. “You have no idea how much.”

“I can guess,” he says, and she pinches his thumb, sharp and startling as a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> My Tumblr is shu-of-the-wind, as always.
> 
> And yes, before anyone asks, there will be a Darcy side of this. Just...after I've recovered emotionally.
> 
> Also, if anyone is good at mix covers for 8tracks, ping me? I need help of the artistic variety.


End file.
